Politicus Pod

There is growing support for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office, but what is the 25th Amendment, and how would the removal process work? The Daily is fighting for democracy. Please join us by becoming a subscriber.When the 25th Amendment is referred to, what people mean is Article 4, which states:Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.This is a free story for all readers. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.In plain English, Congress can’t trigger the 25th Amendment. Only the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can start the 25th Amendment process. Even if the VP and a cabinet majority send the notification to Congress that the 25th Amendment has been invoked, it requires a 2/3 majority in the House and the Senate to remove Trump.There is not a 2/3 majority in either body of Congress, much less both, that would support removing Trump.The 25th Amendment was written and implemented for situations like the current one in the United States, where a declining president is unable to fulfill his oath of office and has become a danger to the nation.It is 25th Amendment time for Trump, but it is certain that his cabinet will never have the courage to invoke it.Do you agree that it is 25th Amendment time for Trump? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.comOur live video today covered how Democrats are winning on healthcare. I’d appreciate it if you would check it out. If you want to watch the entire video, please consider becoming a subscriber.It is not an exaggeration to suggest that when Democrats decided to make healthcare the central focus of the Republican government, they changed the trajectory of American politics.Democrats were always going to be in a good position for the 2026 midterm election, but their position upgraded from good to great because of the way that Republicans have refused to extend the popular Obamacare subsidies and gone out of their way to dig the political hole even deeper.Consider that no one was talking about healthcare as a top issue before the government shutdown in the fall.The latest AP/NORC poll found that healthcare is now the top issue for voters in 2026.The AP reported:About 4 in 10 U.S. adults named health care or health issues in an open-ended question that asked respondents to share up to five issues they want the government to work on in the coming year. That’s up from about one-third last year.…The poll shows a similar landscape to the one Trump faced at the end of his first year in office during his first term, when health care reform was at the top of many Americans’ minds. But Trump has an added complication now. At the end of 2017, very few mentioned cost of living concerns — now, about one-third do.Healthcare is now a bigger issue in the eyes of voters than affordability. The question is, how did Democrats, who began the year as a hopeless political party, turn the entire political landscape on its head?Read more below.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.comThe United States has a long history of presidential scandals. No president can match Donald Trump in sheer number of scandals, but Trump doesn’t just have quantity, he also has what seems like it is the worst presidential scandal in US history.Most presidents get themselves in trouble by trying to cover up an activity. The Daily is outside the Beltway journalism for the people. Please support us byt becoming a subscriber.Going back through the presidents since Nixon, nobody else matches Trump’s Epstein cover-up. Jimmy Carter, no, no scandals you can speak of. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra. That was a big one, but it was not at this level of depravity and sickness of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.George H.W. Bush, nothing much there. Bill Clinton had the Lewinsky scandal. We know about that. But the Lewinsky scandal is nowhere near on the same level as protecting one of the world’s most infamous pedophiles and potentially being involved in some of those crimes.Story continues below.

Sharp-eyed readers and viewers have spotted the bias. One of the first questions that Democrats get when asked about a potential government shutdown is why won’t Democrats compromise with Republicans. The answer is that Republicans are in control of the entire federal government, and it is their job to compromise with Democrats if they want to keep the government open.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Sarah Jones recently discussed the media and the shutdown on Chew’s Views where she said: Trump and Republicans were planning on blaming Democrats for. And I saw like most of the mainstream media was like, oh yeah, Democrats are gonna get blamed because, Republicans will say, we’re gonna fire these people, or we’re not gonna pay veterans.And then boom, too bad. Democrats get the blame. And I was sitting over here going, you’re you’re just going to repeat their propaganda talking points without any context that they have a trifecta of power right now. And that's the only time we ever have these cliff-hangers, we’re gonna do a shutdown, is when Republicans refuse to do their jobs.The Daily needs your support to stand up to corporate media. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Usually they’ve been in the party of the minority. And that’s the only way they could get the issues that they wanted. To have to be addressed because they weren’t issues that the American public actually wanted. So they would use this threat and drive Democrats into being the only adult in the room and take care of business and protect the country.And, that’s, here we are in this position. It’s very strange where to say Democrats have to stop doing that in order to get. Republicans to do their job. Yeah, because how long can you parent this group of, they’re just Trump boot lickers at this point, right? They’re not trying to do anything positive for the country.It’s all about how to protect Donald Trump, how to protect the Epstein files from coming out, how to protect the corruption from being exposed, how to gaslight the entire world about the rising threat of right-wing violence in this country that is escalating and has started to escalate under Donald Trump’s entrance into our political world.The plan is to blame the Democrats for the government shutdown. The media wants to blame Democrats and take the side of relieving Republicans from all responsibility for their choices. If the government shuts down, and you begin to hear odd things coming out of the mainstream press blaming Democrats, your ears aren’t deceiving you. It is just the billionaire-run media sticking to the GOP plan.What do you think? Will the media provide factual and fair coverage if there is a shutdown? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the beltway journalism for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.Two things can be true at the same time. The shooting of Charlie Kirk was a horrible act of political violence that has no place in society, and the United States has a problem with the extremist right-wing rhetoric, which Kirk also engaged in.Sarah Jones appeared on Chew’s Views on Monday, where she discussed the media coverage and whitewashing of right-wing rhetoric after the Kirk shooting: I've never seen anything like this before of just a complete retelling of the story. We saw this with January 6th, but there was a lot of pushback with the facts that we are not seeing this time. And I think some of that might be, I don't know. I suspect a lot of it is just appeasing the Trump administration.But I also think that a lot of people are really afraid of those people and they don't wanna get, because Nick Fuentes put out a statement saying, I will denounce anyone who commits violence. 'cause he knew everybody was looking at him. And then he also, of course, blamed the left with no evidence.Because that's what they do, and no one is calling that out. Like, how come isn't that dangerous? And in the frame of all of that happening, Richard, one of the things I'm really concerned about that I don't see being talked about again in the media is that while elected officials have and the media, they have the money and the means and the network to get security.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Charlie Kirk Wasn’t Doing Disagreement The Right WayThe whitewashing of Kirk’s rhetoric is being done by media elites like Ezra Klein who recently wrote that Kirk was doing disagreement the right way.Sarah Jones responded to this claim: Ezra Klein wrote an article where he apparently praised. Charlie Kirk's form of disagreement. He was doing it the right way. I'm sorry. Didn't he call for the killing of Joe Biden? Yeah. Is that how we disagree the right way? And, the thing that really gets me about this is always. And I don't, God, I don't wanna harp on white men all the time because it is not all white men.And I know that, and I really appreciate the fact that it isn't, and there's a lot of white men who are good allies, but there are so many and it seems like once. They're in a position of power and elitism that really crystallizes for them because I thought, wow, Ezra, like it's easy for you to see disagreement, rhetoric about taking rights away from other people, and saying that the civil rights action had been passed, and women shouldn't vote.All of the things women shouldn't have the right to have life-saving. medical care. Those things are just a disagreement for somebody who isn't; their rights aren't on the line, so I would not like, I would rather not be lectured to by somebody who doesn't have any skin in the game whose rights aren't on the line, about how this is just a form of disagreement.The media has been revising history, and this revision damages the country, because the nation does have a problem with violent extremism. Crime statistics show that the vast majority of these threats come from right-wing domestic extremists. The press has an obligation to stick to the facts and not aid those who wish to rewrite history, but the press has failed after the killing of Charlie Kirk. That failure will have consequences for the issues of political extremism and trust in mainstream media.What do you think? Has the press allowed Kirk’s rhetoric to be whitewashed and glossed over? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway journalism that is fighting for democracy. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.Donald Trump seems to be doing everything that he can to distract people from the failing economy and rising prices, but what if economic decline isn’t a bug, but an intended feature of Trump’s presidency?Sarah Jones was on Deadline DC with Brad Bannon and she connected rising prices and democracy:  It's heartbreaking for people who are out there, who are retired, who are on Social Security, people who worked hard their whole lives, people who don't have a social safety net anymore to think about, they're not looking at how can I make all these cuts so I can afford my groceries?The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.They're thinking. Do I have to pick between my rent and my groceries? And that is a horrible tragedy in this country where we have all of these billionaires now and the wealth disparity just exploding. It just reminds me of those stories out of Russia about how many people can't afford to eat.And I think some of that is deliberate to weaken people to when people have to worry about food, they can't worry about whether Donald Trump is violating their constitutional rights. So there's less pushback when people are worried about their survival, and I do think some of that is intentional, but in terms of whether it's the Epstein scandal or the money, or, the inflation and the prices of everything.Sarah also discussed in the video above why Democrats should focus on inflation and prices and not focus on the idea that the Epstein files will bring Trump down.The perennial question with Donald Trump is whether his failure is due to incompetence or if it is done intentionally to harm people. If Trump can keep people distracted, they are less likely to pay attention to his attack on democracy and corruption, and there is no better distraction than hunger or the inability to afford basic necessities.Trump could be incompetent, or he could be sabotaging the economy so that there is no more upward mobility and the elite get richer at everyone else’s expense.What Trump is doing isn’t the American dream, and it is a vital reason why people must resist.Is Trump intentionally trying to starve Americans? What do you think? Join the discussion in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.The video above is this week’s live chat with the readers. Chats happen each Wednesday at 2 PM ET. Give the video above a watch and consider joining us each Wednesday.The terrible jobs numbers released on Friday were the cherry on top of a lousy week for the administration. The week opened with Trump vanishing and the White House releasing old pictures and videos as new in an effort to fool the American people into believing that Trump was active.On Tuesday, the administration promised a big announcement, which turned out to be the relocation of Space Command to Alabama. The event seemed like a pretext to put Trump in front of the cameras to prove that he is not dead.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Trump suffered multiple defeats in court related to his effort to freeze federal funds to Harvard, and courts ruled that his use of the National Guard as a civilian police force is illegal. Trump has also had his tariffs ruled unlawful, and the Department of Justice continues to fail to win cases in Washington, DC.The president tried to pretend that he could change the name of the Department of Defense with an executive order, and watched India cozy up to Russia and China.Trump’s HHS Secretary had one of the worst Senate hearings in recent memory, and Epstein survivors stormed the Capitol and revived a Trump scandal that refuses to go away. It is unprecedented for an administration that is still in its first year to have so much failure so consistently. Nothing that Trump is doing as president is popular or working. This is a historic level of complete and comprehensive failure. These are challenging times that the nation is enduring, and it is essential to take a broader perspective and recognize that this president is not achieving success. Trump blusters and tries to look strong, but if you tear away the propaganda and sideshow, this is a president who is failing.What do you think about Trump’s week of fails? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway journalism that is for the people and supported by the people. You can support us by becoming a subscriber.Donald Trump wants to cast himself as a crime fighter, but it is clear that the president with 34 felony convictions to his name is only interested in certain types of crime that he views as politically beneficial. Trump has been trying to distract from the Epstein files for months, and while the story has not gone away. The questions continue to follow him daily. It is important to point out the extreme steps that this president has taken in an effort to redefine crime and what sort of crime he wants the American people to pay attention to. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Imaginary rampant crime in majority minority cities like Washington, DC, and Chicago, according to Donald Trump, deserves national attention. Trump has been abusing the powers of the presidency to create an imaginary crisis. As Sarah Jones said on Chew’s Views: I keep saying this over and over again. All of this is a distraction, and today at 10:30 AM, Representatives Massie and Khanna are having a press conference with 10 of the Epstein victims. And that is a part of why this is happening. Why he keeps amping up these threats to the cities. This is what Trump always does. This is a reality TV show president. He knows how to direct attention away from what he doesn't want to talk about, and to lob bombs over in other, you know, far away from him and whatever he's hiding. He's also got the crypto scam that just got busted yet again.All of this deep corruption that he is engaging in. All of that is to hide his own corruption and a big part of his corruption, whether he was guilty of anything, uh, in terms of the actual sexual abuse of these victims. Or he is just friends with this person and somehow, for some reason, trying to hide this and giving, you know, the only co-conspirator who was convicted a free ride, whether that's all he's doing, or he had money involved in this.What is happening is he's using the highest office in the land to protect the perpetrators of this huge act of violence against women and girls. And we know from a lot of psychological reports that people who rape women often commit violence against women.And we know that many of these mass shooters have a crossover with violence against women, stalking, and rape. If he actually cared about crime, he would be, uh, going after everyone in the Epstein files. He would be releasing the Epstein files and going after the people.And he wouldn't be giving Ghislaine Maxwell any time. Donald Trump’s only interest is in distraction, not fighting crime.What do you think? Is Trump using the troops to distract from the Epstein files? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please support the independent journalism of The Daily by becoming a subscriber.A criminal who rebrands himself as a crimefighter might not be serious about fighting crime. The point that Trump is a person who commits crimes and also claims to be fighting crime was pointed out in our most recent live chat, which you can view in the video above.Republicans wasted no time trying to move the conversation about the Minnesota school shooting immediately toward the gunman and away from any serious conversation about why so many mass shootings and school shootings keep happening in the United States.The Minneapolis shooting, where 16 of the 19 victims were children, is a perfect opportunity for a self-styled crime-fighting president to step up and lead the nation, but Donald Trump has done the opposite. Trump’s White House says he has been briefed, talked to Gov. Tim Walz, and ordered flags lowered.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Trump has spent days jabbering in front of cameras about his imaginary solving of crime in Washington, DC, but he has been nowhere to be found when a real crime needs his attention.Donald Trump is a phony crime fighter. His stage crime fighting is designed for nothing more than photo-ops and to score political points with his base. If Trump really cared about crime, he would propose actual solutions to the mass shooting and gun violence epidemics in the country. As usual with Trump, his actions are for show. The real work of being president is not something he is interested in, and that won’t change, no matter how many children die or get injured in mass shootings.What do you think? Is Trump a fake crime-fighting fraud? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is proud independent journalism that needs your help. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.The video above is this week’s live chat with our readers, where we talk about Democrats fighting back, Texas Democrats, and California redistricting. If you like what you see, please join our upcoming chat next week.This is getting really old. That is the first thought that crossed my mind when mainstream media outlets and cable news reported that Trump’s DOJ had raided former Trump administration official John Bolton.Trump had nothing new to base the raid on. The president’s administration is still trying to find a criminal mishandling of classified information dating back more than five years to when Bolton wrote his book about his time in Trump’s first administration. A grand jury came to the conclusion that Bolton did nothing wrong in 2020, but here we are in 2025, with Trump trying the same stunt again.It is Gavin Newsom’s fault. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Newsom and the California Democrats have been taking up a lot of the media oxygen by doing something different. The California Democrats are fighting back and playing by the Trump GOP’s rules. The Texas gerrymander has blown up in Trump’s face, and with the shadow of the Epstein files hanging over him every second of every day, Donald Trump thought it was time to throw raiding John Bolton at the wall to see if it would stick.It hasn’t.It is very clear now that Donald Trump is out of tricks. Blaming Barack Obama doesn’t work. Neither does blaming Joe Biden. Trump tried to hold a ‘summit’ with Putin, but that blew up in his face and failed to dominate the headlines.Trump has even sent the military into Washington, D.C., but he still remains an unpopular, failing president who is on track to lose the midterm election and see his presidency evaporate.Nothing is working. The distractions that used to come so easily to Trump are now an old man playing his greatest hits to a country that refuses to be distracted.The vast majority of the country has turned on Trump, as he has delivered on none of the promises that mattered most to voters.In his first term, he could break promises and distract because Trump was coasting on Obama’s economy, but even though Donald Trump is the same, the country has changed.This time, Americans overwhelmingly aren’t falling for it.What do you think? Did Trump raid Bolton to distract from the Epstein files? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is fighting the oligarchs with outside the Beltway journalism. Please help us by becoming a subscriber.The Trump/Putin meeting turned out no differently than any of the other Trump/Putin meetings. It was shrouded in secrecy and ended with Trump showing his subservience to the Russian dictator.During her latest appearance on Chew’s Views, Sarah Jones brought up some key points.Sarah said: We've seen this coming for so long because Russia helped him get elected in 2016. And Republicans keep pretending that's a big hoax, and it isn't a hoax. It happened. It's a horrible, this has been an ongoing assault on Western democracy that Putin has engaged in very successfully thanks to the Republican Party and why were they so open to help from him because they know that they can't win elections without lying and tricking people. And so here we are. That has brought us to this moment. Yes, that was a horrifying moment. And I think afterwards, a lot of the press corps were saying that they saw members of the administration looking ashen and almost frightened by what had happened behind closed doors. And I actually, before they even reported that, when I first saw Donald Trump after that, he looked so shaken to me and I thought, what did Putin say to you? The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And the problem with, there are so many problems with Donald Trump, but one thing I think, I'm not sure people, because there are so many crises and so many scandals going on at the same time with him, that people probably don't realize. We used to get readouts. You would always get a readout of whenever a president talks to you on the phone or has a meeting with any foreign representative.We would get a readout of what they discussed, and there are other people in the room to document what is discussed so that you can't, there can't be, you know quid pro quo blackmail happening backroom deals. That doesn't happen anymore. We don't get that information because of him.He came into office and a lot of the stuff that they usually put out to the White House press pool, it doesn't come out anymore. And so, when I saw his face, I thought Putin said something to you. We're never gonna know what it was. Was it about the Epstein files? Did they, did he say I have because he has something on Donald Trump that is very clear.The meeting was called by Putin, who rehabilitated his image on the world stage by having a literal red carpet rolled out for him by the Trump administration. In the days after the meeting, Trump has been carrying out the Putin agenda.What does Putin have on Trump? We can only guess.It is not good, and it is endangering US democracy.What do you think Putin has on Trump? Share your opinions in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please support The Daily by becoming a subscriber.In the video above, I talk about JD Vance’s attempt to make the Epstein scandal go away.It has been clear for a while now that without the propping up by Donald Trump, JD Vance wouldn’t have won the Ohio Republican Senate primary and the general election. Without Trump, Vance wouldn’t be vice president. Anytime JD Vance has been put on the national stage, disaster has followed. Vance has to go into hiding when he goes on vacation because he gets protested. Vance was sent to Greenland and had to cut the trip short because he was completely unwanted, and he even broke the college football national championship trophy.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. JD Vance is the kind of vice president who would try to hold a secret meeting at his house with other Trump administration officials, have it get leaked to the media, cancel the meeting, then go on the friendliest show on planet earth to Trump administration officials and screw up the response. Maria Bartiromo was throwing JD Vance softballs, and he kept swinging and missing.The Trump administration has apparently decided to blame Joe Biden for Trump being in the Epstein files, and, if that doesn’t work, Vance tried to shift the blame to Bill Clinton.Vance’s response was astoundingly bad, and the mainstream media hasn’t said a peep about it.In fact, the coverage was centered on Vance as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, which should make Democrats say, “yes, please.”JD Vance has a unique mixture of unlikability, incompetence, and the strong scent of white male entitlement. Vance is the ideal lackey for Donald Trump. JD would never let the Constitution get in the way like Mike Pence, but Vance is also the embodiment of why the second Trump administration is failing. Presidential elections are like snowflakes. Every single one is unique, so it is too early to predict how 2028 will end up, but if Vance’s attempt at Epstein damage control represents how he will run MAGA, Trump’s movement may be facing a fake hillbilly extinction event.What do you think about how Vance handled the Epstein meeting question? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please support The Daily and the fight for democracy by becoming a subscriber.This is getting embarrassing. In the video above, I break down the Speaker of the Texas House’s reply to Democrats who left the state to deny Republicans a quorum to pass a new gerrymandered congressional district map of the state. The Democratic Party is supporting the Texas Democrats, but they need to be doing more. Republicans have nothing. The big move from Texas state Republicans is to take away the Democratic House members’ ability to have their checks direct deposited. Supposedly, this is going to make the Democrats show up in Austin to get their checks and then boom!! The Democrats will be detained and forced onto the House floor until Republicans have a quorum and can pass the Trump-mandated gerrymandered map.That’s the “big plan.”Thanks for reading The Daily! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Texas House Democrats are not running away; they're not criminals. They voluntarily left. They took a principle to stand and left. The Republicans don't have much in the toolbox to bring them back. Greg Abbott is saying he's gonna call special session after special session until the Democrats come back and he can pass his map.But Greg Abbott also has a deadline. Greg Abbott's deadline is the end of the year. If this map is not gerrymandered by the end of the year, then it doesn't go into effect at all for the midterm. My proposal, being from a union household is very simply this. If Democrats had their act together, which I know is sometimes really stretching it, what they should do is they should go to their donors set up basically, what is a democracy fund, A strike fund we would call it, in terms of union workers.Go to every person who voted for the Harris/Walz ticket and ask for a dollar. And don't go through a super PAC. Don’t take a cut out for “administrative costs.” Raise $60 or $70 million to cover these expenses for these Texas Democrats to pay their fines so that it doesn't matter how much Greg Abbott and the Texas Republicans fine them.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It's covered so that it doesn't matter, so that they can bring their families wherever they've gone and keep those Democrats out of Texas for the rest of the year. Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that make everybody go, Wow, the Democrats are serious about this. And it wasn't just the 50 Texas Democrats, it was every Democrat in the party that stepped up and said, we got you. We got your back. We're not gonna let this happen. We're gonna fight. We're not just gonna talk about democracy as a threat. And then once Donald Trump wins the election, say democracy didn't play well with voters, so we're not gonna talk about that anymore.It's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous that these people were so big into talking about democracy for years, and then when they found out it wasn't a winning campaign issue, they stopped. What does that tell you? Is this a group of people that are serious about protecting democracy, or are they listening to some high-paid consultants who are just telling them this polls well with voters?And then when they lost the election, a lot of them stopped talking about democracy. A lot of them stopped. Why did they stop? This is our situation. What are we gonna do? You have a choice. You can sit on your hands. You can watch cable news, and you can just follow the coverage and maybe tell some people, tell some friends, and whatnot about what's happening, or you can step up. You can demand that the Democratic Party take care of these Texas Democrats.You can demand they take the fight to the next level.Republicans have nothing, and they are humiliating themselves right now. It’s time for Democrats to step up and strike a blow for democracy.What do you think? Have Texas Republicans been exposed? Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is independent media that needs your help. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Republicans have used many tools to legally reshape the electorate to benefit themselves. Everything from restrictive voting laws to voter suppression efforts to gerrymandering has become part of the GOP's electoral manipulation toolbox.After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, the Republican Party shifted from trying to win elections with ideas to trying to win elections by changing the composition of the electorate.In this context, a historically unpopular president and his party have reached their logical next step by attempting a mid-decade gerrymander. As Sarah Jones said on WPCT’s Chew’s Views, now is the time for Democrats to do whatever is necessary to protect democracy:At this point, I'm not sure how anyone can be against Democrats doing what they have to do to keep our democracy, because it's very clear that if we don't get power back in the US House in this midterm election. Things are going to get much worse than they are right now, and that is not a positive direction.Thanks for reading The Daily! This post is public so feel free to share it.And so I, and I say that as somebody who I have been an institutionalist the entire time I've been writing, so I think it's 15 years now. I, this is the opposite of where I was until the second Trump term, when it was clear that America is broken and that the institutions aren't gonna save us. And I think, President Joe Biden really tried to shore up all those institutions, and he did so much good work to do that, that he won't get recognized for.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And I saw that he was in like the lowest position in one of the polls. It's just really sad how Americans have been so misled about what's going on in their government. But at any rate, so I don't know what the exact argument is, but and I see a lot of Republicans saying, oh, Democrats do it just like us.And that's not true either. CNN came out and said that's not true. Republicans really started this in 2010. That was the backlash to President Barack Obama and to Obamacare, which has now saved so many people's lives.And again, like that's another example. 'cause progressives were part of that backlash. They abandoned him over that. And that's part of how, what I'm, I wish that the Democratic Party that liberals and progressives could look at that, look at 2010 and say to yourselves, do we wanna redo that? We have to learn how to come together when it's important. It's good to have vigorous debate. That's part of being a big tent party. That's part of being a coalition of people who are challenging ideas instead of worshiping a person. And it's not a cult and that's really important, but I think there's a big failure on the part of the base, basically to recognize when it's time to come together and put aside individual desires, individual issues that are keeping people divided. Democrats have realized that they have to be in power before they can protect democracy. Getting back into power should be the first and only goal. Moral victories and principles don’t count when democracy is on the line, and that is why the entire party must come together and do whatever it takes to win in 2026.What do you think? Should Democrats be doing whatever it takes? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily needs your help to continue to survive as independent media. You can help us by becoming a subscriber.When Donald Trump returned to the United States from Scotland, it became obvious. Instead of getting front and center in front of the cameras, it almost looked as if Trump was trying to hide behind a pillar and shout his answers to reporters from a distance. Video:Trump also appeared to be using the pillar to hold himself up while he talked.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Here is the transcript of CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asking Trump about Epstein:COLLINS: Mr. President, you said earlier that Jeffrey Epstein was stealing young women. You said Jeffrey Epstein was stealing young women from your spa. Did that raise alarm bells for you?TRUMP: Be quiet.The dam appears to be breaking. Trump has tried to hold back the political floodwaters for more than a month, but the questions keep coming as the president’s defenses appear to be weakening.Trump has now been reduced to telling reporters to be quiet when they ask about Epstein.The president’s policies are failing. The economy is slowing. Trump’s poll numbers are in the dumpster, and the Epstein questions refuse to go away. Trump has never faced a time like this during his political career. Donald Trump is no longer controlling the political conversation, but is instead at its mercy. The president has tried all of his old tricks to change the subject and none of it has worked.Something feels different this time. Trump is older and weaker, and unable to hijack the conversation through an onslaught of distractions.Republicans put all of their eggs in the Trump basket, and now the basket is on fire on their front porch. Trump will still linger if he lives long enough to finish his term, but the dam is breaking, and Republicans have no backup plan.What do you think about Trump hiding from Epstein questions? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily needs your help. Support us by subscribing.In the video above, we dig deeper into Trump’s meltdown in Scotland.It would be easy to dismiss it, as more Trump crazy, but there is more happening than the usual. The first sinister part of this video was the racism, as Trump just tries to get Europe to also deport anybody who isn't white. You could miss that really easily if you just let it slide by.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Secondly, what's even more sinister is his promotion of the fossil fuel industry while diminishing a cheap source of renewable power and energy. Yale University found that one of the main reasons why electricity prices have felt stable in the United States over the last 10 years was the growth of renewable energy.Trump and the Republican Party hacked out the renewable energy tax breaks and tax cuts and are attacking renewables. And that's gonna raise your energy prices. You're already seeing energy prices go up because of all the necessary power for AI. Donald Trump is trying to raise your energy bills.He's trying to deprive you of a cheap source of energy that will lower your cost, that will be better for your health, better for your welfare, better for your family, better for the world that you live in. If you enjoy nature, then you shouldn't believe any of this crap at all. It's a lie. It's a total lie.Trump went off the rails. Trump can't have a sane conversation. By the way, the topic here was immigration. The question was immigration. They were not talking about windmills. Trump went over the edge, broke, and showed his mental decline in front of the entire world, and went off on one of his windmill tangents.There is also something very ugly here that shows that Donald Trump is owned and operated by the fossil fuel companies, and it's easy to look at him and be like This is crazy. Okay. Yeah. That sets the surface level, but there's an undermining and as sinister element to this, that's an actual agenda that goes beyond Trump's mental decline and Trump's inability to be president, and the things that are happening.The deeper look shows that he is intentionally doing very destructive and harmful things to America. It may sound like madness, but there is an agenda at work that could be devastating for the country and the planet.What do you think of Trump’s fossil fuel agenda and lies about renewables? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily needs your help. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.Could there really have been any other ending for Trump? A man whose constant companions have been failure and scandal for his entire adult life has now seen both of his defining traits combine together in spectacular fashion within six months of returning back to the White House.Donald Trump never had a superpower. The idea that he was some sort of political superhero who could defy political gravity was a myth that was started by the mainstream media and was embraced by Donald Trump.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Donald Trump’s power is derived from the protection that Republicans in Congress have given him. This dates back to Trump’s first term in office. Remember, two Trump impeachments failed because Republicans in the Senate refused to convict him.Trump’s other power came from the media. Why did the media build up Trump so much and treat him the way that no other president gets treated, a.k.a. the Trump rules, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has called them?The answer is money. During Trump’s first term in office, he made corporate media relevant again while making them lots and lots of money. That money led the media to push for Trump to win the 2024 election, only to see TV ratings fall, website traffic plummet, and Trump-related books flop. Everything that worked in the first term is failing in the second.Trump’s fall makes sense because he is a two-term president, and presidents not named Bill Clinton always lose popularity in their second term. The media thought that they could relive their Trump good old days, but the American people have not played along.The polling is an absolute disaster. Trump is three points away from the worst job approval rating of his first term. He has a negative approval rating on every issue in the Gallup poll, and the Big Beautiful Bill appears to be an anchor around the necks of Republicans.If Trump continues on his current trajectory, Democrats will at minimum take back the House majority, and this will be the end of the line for relevancy and his presidency. Trump could spend his final two years in the White House as his de facto retirement home, as the nation’s attention turns to the 2028 election. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Another dot was connected on Monday, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters that he would not be allowing a vote on a resolution urging the release of the Epstein files before the House goes on summer recess for the month of August.Johnson said there would be no vote because the House and Trump are on the same page:Here's what I would say about the Epstein files. There is no daylight between the House Republicans, the House, and the president on maximum transparency. He has said that he wants all of the credible files related to Epstein to be released. He's asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court. All of that is in process right now. My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing. And if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we'll look at that. But I don't think we're at that point right now because we agree with the president.Video:There is so much agreement with the president that Johnson is working on a plan to kill a petition to force a vote on the Epstein files because so many members of his own conference support it.That’s not agreement.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. Toreceive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The GOP’s Anti-Woman Agenda And The Epstein Cover-UpSarah Jones put the Epstein scandal and the GOP’s anti-woman agenda together during an appearance on Deadline DC with Brad Bannon.Sarah said: I do wanna connect this to the Republican anti-abortion stance just for a moment. I know that might sound wild, but it is to me as a woman, very important to make the connection that when when you make abortion illegal, you incentivize rape and you incentivize domestic abusers who use rape and pregnancy as a way to control women. And so the fact that they did they are pushing anti-abortion. They're pushing to make abortion illegal. And then here we are. Now, President Trump is hiding. The Epstein files, whatever exists there the information, the materials that were not released, he's hiding.And those two things aren't disconnected in my mind. And I think that when it tells you about somebody, the things we knew about him the things that have come out that he was an is now an adjudicated sexual assaulter, all of those things are very relevant to this conversation. You can’t have the Epstein conversation without also having the conversation about what Republicans have done to reproductive rights because it is all part of the same thread.The Republican Party is behaving like a pro-rapist party that is an accessory to a potential Epstein cover-up.What do you think about the link between Epstein and the Republican Party’s attack on reproductive freedom? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway news for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.In the case of Jeffrey Epstein and the fallout that continues to follow Donald Trump, the crime really is worse than the cover-up.The political class is doing what it always does by talking about the political impact of the Epstein files situation, but what is being overlooked is what Donald Trump and his administration are working so hard to hide. Sarah Jones put the light back on the women and girls during an appearance on Chew’s Views on Monday.Sarah said: I hear that everyone is talking about this whole Epstein thing and what I feel is left out of this conversation. And as a woman, I really want to center this for a moment for everyone that's listening.This is about elites taking advantage of women and girls, and they've been allowed to do that by this corrupt legal system and corrupt politicians. Epstein didn't even deny doing these things, but he compared it to stealing a bagel. And for all the women and the girls in this country who have been really struggling because all of this is very triggering for women.Most women have, they know somebody or it's happened to them. They have been on the side of being dehumanized in this culture. And that is the light motif of Donald Trump's existence. He dehumanizes women and girls. He's done it from sexualizing his young daughter, to becoming an adjudicated sexual assaulter, to burying his former wife and mother of his children on a golf course for tax break.And the only people who have paid any price for the Epstein files, the Epstein horrible sex trafficking and abuse and rape of young women and of girls are women. Ghislaine Maxwell. And I just wanna say for everyone, I see you. I know how hard this is. It's so wrong. This is an injustice of such epic proportions.To have a president who we all knew this was who he was, and all of these people supported him, and it is a horrible thing every day for women and girls to know that and to live in this culture. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Society never wants to talk about the abuse of women and girls, so it is not surprising that a mainstream US media that is owned and dominated by white men in the most powerful positions would rather talk about the political dynamics to avoid contemplating the horrors that were inflicted on girls who were abused and sex trafficked. What Donald Trump is trying to cover up is so heinous that 89% oppose what he is doing, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.We should never forget the women and girls, and the elites who protected Jeffrey Epstein and allowed his crimes to go on for years. Donald Trump is one of those elites who has protected and continues to protect Epstein and others through his cover-up, and what he is covering up is the abuse and rape of women and girls.What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Trump responded to Putin playing him and showing no sign of wanting peace by threatening him with tariffs. Trump’s DHS Secretary is being called incompetent, and it is being suggested that her decisions caused the deaths of children in Texas. Economists are warning that prices are going to begin to rise this summer as non-tariffed inventory is running low and increased costs will soon be passed on to customers. The president’s approval rating is in the dumpster, and the nation has turned on him over his signature issue of immigration.All presidencies face challenges. Good presidents build administrations that are staffed with competent people who can weather the storms.Donald Trump has chosen to staff his administration with loyalists who aren’t qualified for the jobs that they currently occupy. Trump wants to be a strongman, but he has constructed a weak and flimsy administration whose guiding principle is saying yes to Donald Trump.What took months and years for the American people to figure out during the first Trump administration happened in a matter of weeks. Even when a president is opposed to democracy, the guardrails of democracy still restrict that president. An administration that was serious about toppling democracy would need to be built on competence and popular support.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Donald Trump’s administration has neither.The Trump regime is crumbling, and the president can’t fix it. Instead, Trump will likely do what he always does, and continue to try to sell failure as success and hope that just enough Americans buy it.If voters take Trump’s House and Senate enablers away from him in 2026, it will be over for him. Trump is a weak man being propped up by even weaker Republicans in Congress who fear him.The regime is crumbling, but it will take a push from the people to make it collapse. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

If you find our work to be essential and of value, please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.The other shoes are beginning to drop, and it looks like House Republicans are looking for an off-ramp from the unpopular Medicaid cuts in the reconciliation bill.Recently, Politico reported:For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) — who ultimately voted for the sweeping domestic policy package — pledged to ensure that cuts to state taxes that fund Medicaid would never take effect.Sixteen House moderates similarly urged Speaker Mike Johnson in a letter in June to revert the Senate’s language. They all ended up voting for the bill, but at least some were also thinking that there was an opportunity to revisit the deep cuts in the future.“Any of the changes in the provider tax don’t go into effect until ’28, so he’s right, there’s time,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said about Hawley’s comments, though he added that the system does “have to be reformed” and that “we’re on the right track.”Then, Speaker Mike Johnson announced during an appearance on Fox News Sunday that he wants to do two more reconciliation bills, one in the fall and one in the spring.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. After this announcement, it all started to make sense. House and Senate Republicans are going to try to claim credit for cutting Medicaid among their base, but they will also attempt to roll back those cuts before they take effect in 2028. Republicans are trying to have it both ways, but they are already on record as voting to take healthcare away from 17 million Americans, and the American people aren’t going to forget.The battle to prevent health insurance from being taken away from millions isn’t over. It has at least two more rounds to go.What do you think about Republicans trying to get out of the Medicaid cuts that they voted for? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway journalism for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.Donald Trump’s allies before he returned to the White House promised a campaign of shock and awe, but we are almost six months into the second Trump presidency and what has been playing out is a tug of war where Trump pretends that his victory against American democracy is a foregone conclusion while the people fight back.Sarah Jones talked about this dynamic on Monday’s Chew’s Views and said: I'm so impressed by the people who continue to get out and protest, who call their representatives and their senators the states that are standing up. That's another way, we have all these ways of fighting that they didn't have in Nazi Germany.And I just wanna make that clear. There's so much fear and I share that fear. I'm not going to whitewash that I'm not gonna pretend it's not there. It is there and it's real. But there are also differences in comparison what was going on in Nazi Germany, and that's important. We have state-controlled elections here.We have governors in some blue states who are willing to stand up and do things to protect their people. And yes, these are all going to be fights, it isn't oh, they're gonna stand up and that he's going to give in. That's not going to happen. It's going to be a battle for sure, but it's really important to have people willing to stand up.And so when I saw this initiative, I thought that's what people need. They need to know that they're not alone. When you see somebody else speaking up, and I'm sure everybody has this example in their personal life, when somebody, or you've read someone or you listen to someone speaking up, it emboldens you and it gives you the sense when you know you're not alone in a fight, it helps you rise to the moment.And so we all have to remember constantly that we are not alone. And I think, when we look at presidents who've really roused the American people and help remind them of who they are and what they can do, the two that come to mind for me at the moment, there's many of them, but I would say at the moment, JFK and Barack Obama.And both of them got into the whole thing about standing up and about. Barack Obama? Yes, we can. You just, he would always say, it's not about me, it's about you. And that was to empower each of us. We are the power of this country, and that is very true. It's baked into our system.He's (Trump) trying to take that away. He and the Republican Party and their, and this, I would say corrupt Supreme Court are trying to take that away from people. And it's interesting. That doesn't mean that, oh, go ahead. No, you were gonna say that doesn't mean it doesn't mean that it's gonna work. And I think that's how I ended this piece.It 's a battle. They want win this battle, but we are fighting back. This conclusion to this fight is not, it's not a foregone conclusion. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Trump isn’t taking power as much as he is hoping that people and institutions voluntarily surrender their power to him. We have seen law firms, media companies, and some universities cave to intimidation tactics and surrender power.The vast majority of Americans have refused to surrender the power. Trump sent troops to Los Angeles to intimidate, but Californians battled back and didn’t give up their power.The beauty of the American system is that the power of the people is built into it, and no president can remove it.It will be a long battle, but as long as the American people continue to fight, Trump’s intimidation tactics will fail.What do you think about the fight the American people are demonstrating? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Congressional majorities that sense their time in power might be fleeting all share a similar habit. They think that they can defeat the looming wrath of the voters by delaying the unpopular parts of major legislation. The cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in the “Big Beautiful Bill” are extremely unpopular, so Republicans delayed them until after the 2026 and 2028 elections.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The problem for Republicans will come soon after the 2026 midterm election if Democrats take back control of the House. One of the first items on the House Democratic to-do list should be to roll back the Medicaid and ACA cuts, and it is something that could very easily happen in budget negotiations with Trump. If Trump is faced with a government shutdown or even a default because the debt limit increase is only for two years, he should be willing to negotiate away the Medicaid cuts, since he will be a lame-duck president who will only be focused on his legacy.In the immediate term, never discount the ability, some would even say likelihood that House Republicans will implode and enough of them will refuse to support the legislation to the point where it gets kicked back to the Senate.Never ever forget that the current House majority is one of the smallest and most dysfunctional in congressional history.Expecting the majority to do the expected action in a timely manner could be a fool’s errand.Republicans don’t govern like Democrats. They are inept at getting things done, and even if this bill passes and is signed into law, the fight will continue.The delayed implementation of cuts could give Democrats the opportunity to prevent them from becoming a reality.What do you think about how the BBB plays out? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people, so please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber.The pretense of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability has been exposed as a farce, as Donald Trump announced on his social media platform that a ceasefire has been reached between Israel and Iran.Trump posted:CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.” This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!DONALD J. TRUMP,PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICATrump trying to pin a name on the conflict because he thinks that is his ticket to a Nobel Peace Prize is both pathetic and funny. Here is the problem with the ceasefire. There is no verification that Iran’s nuclear capacity or enriched uranium has been destroyed. The whole point supposedly of the United States bombing Iran was to destroy Iran’s capacity to develop a nuclear weapon. No one knows what capacity Iran has, which means that Trump has already given up before his stated objective was verified as achieved. If Iran still has nuclear capabilities, they are the big winner here because it can race to develop a bomb while Trump is taking a victory lap.If the agreement that the Obama administration negotiated had been left in place by Trump, none of this would have been necessary, and the status of Iran’s nuclear program would be well known because it would be under wraps and heavily monitored. Instead, Trump dropped a few bombs, declared victory, and ran away. The whole episode was a laughable failure that may have ensured that Iran develops a nuclear weapon. What do you think of this “ceasefire?” Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway journalism about the issues that you care about the most, so please consider becoming a subscriber.For a decade, Trump has been claiming to be an anti-war candidate. For example, in 2019, Trump posted on Twitter, “Turkey has been planning to attack the Kurds for a long time. They have been fighting forever.. We have no soldiers or Military anywhere near the attack area. I am trying to end the ENDLESS WARS.”Trump has gotten a lot of mileage out of the idea that he is trying to end wars and not start new ones, but Trump has never been about peace.As Sarah Jones said on Chew’s Views: Why did he let, why did the media let Trump run as a peacemaker? When has he ever made peace? He doesn't make peace in his personal life.He's never made peace in his professional life. He operates like a warmonger on an individual level against women as a sexual assaulter against other people he's in business with and against all of the opposition. And anyone who comes up against him politically, he incites violence against them. He attacked the United States for God's sake.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Why was he allowed to run as a peacemaker? It blows my mind. A peacemaker is somebody who sits down to listen to other people's what they need, what they want at the table. That is a peacemaker.Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize for adding the United States to the Israel/Iran war, but the president has never been about peace. Isolationism is not the same thing as peace. There is no such thing as using military force to achieve diplomacy. Republicans should have learned after Richard Nixon tried to bomb his way to diplomacy in Vietnam. In the wars that the United States won, military force was used to defeat an enemy, not as a tool to get to a diplomatic solution.Trump is a peacemaking fraud. He has never been about peace, and the one outcome from this bombing is that the American people now see the true face of Donald Trump.What do you think about Trump as a peacemaking fraud? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please support The Daily by becoming a subscriber.There were millions of people across the country at the No Kings protests on Saturday. Here are some pictures and videos submitted by readers of the demonstrations they attended.Wilmington, NC:The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Sag Harbor, NYGuilford, CTSylva, NCPalm Springs, CA:Palm Springs, CAFargo, ND:Thank you to everyone for submitting their pictures and videos. Protest is your power, and it is a guardrail that Trump can’t dismantle. Keep using your voice, and democracy will prevail.What do you think of these pictures and videos? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Donald Trump’s history is repeating itself. One of the big downward drivers of his approval rating during his first term in office, even before he bungled the pandemic, was his immigration cruelty.Most politicians would learn from failure and adjust. Donald Trump has doubled down on cruelty, and the result can be seen in his approval ratings on the issue.Here are some recent numbers from YouGov:Trump’s efforts to make an example out of Los Angeles and push his immigration agenda have an approval rating of just 36%.Just 25% of Americans think that the federal government should be leading the response on immigration protests:Trump’s actions in Los Angeles are hurting his overall approval rating on deportations:Those are not good numbers. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Donald Trump sent the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles for political reasons. Trump is trying to make an example out of California. The order the president signed to federalize the National Guard was not limited to California. Los Angeles is the first step in what looks like a national campaign to use the military to help ICE carry out immigration raids. The problem for Trump is that he can only win if the people voluntarily surrender their power. The people have been refusing to surrender and have been fighting back, not with violence as Trump wanted in Los Angeles, but with protest. People are using their voices, and when the people have stood up and said no, this administration has backed down. The battle of Los Angeles is likely to end up being a historic point in Trump’s second term. It is the moment when Donald Trump tried to substitute military intimidation for popular opinion, and so far, he has been loudly rebuked by a solid majority of Americans. The corporate media voluntarily surrendered their power before Trump took office, so it is regular people who are leading this fight. A president who has no respect for democracy has run into a brick wall that was built by centuries of democratic principles.Donald Trump has already lost in Los Angeles.What do you think of Trump’s failure to bully in LA? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is outside the Beltway, journalistic truth from the heartland of America. Please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber.Donald Trump is a person obsessed with strength who is consumed by weakness. It has been one of the contradictions that will go down in history as defining Trump. The current president narrowly won two presidential campaigns by running on the promise of making America strong. Yet, both of his presidencies have been so far defined by weakness. Trump has been trying to shake down the corporate owners of CBS for months with a bogus $20 billion defamation lawsuit.In a recent filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that he has suffered mental anguish:Plaintiffs were foreseeably and actually misled by Defendants’ advertising of the Election Special as containing certain statements by Harris, when in fact the Election Special did not contain the statements represented to be included by Defendants, as well as because the Interview was deceptively edited in material ways to misrepresent significant portions of what Harris said throughout her conversations with Whitaker. ECF No. 36 ¶ 155. This led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including Plaintiffs, regarding a household name of the legacy media apparently deceptively distorting its broadcasts, and then resisting attempts to clear the public record. Id. ¶ 187. Moreover, because they were misled by Defendants’ false advertising and tampering with the entirety of the Interview, viewers withheld attention from President Trump and Truth Social by directing their attention to Defendants’ media platforms.Do you know who else is feeling mental anguish right now? The fourteen million people who stand to lose their healthcare, and millions more who could lose their jobs due to Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. All the people trying to get help from the Social Security Administration who can’t reach anyone are feeling a great deal of anguish right now.Trump is a source of anguish for much of the country right now.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TACO Has Trump CrackingTrump is clearly and deeply bothered by the TACO trade, because it exposes him.Donald Trump puts on the show that he did in his reality show. He's playing strong man. But now he's been called out and this is an international humiliation. So he's humiliated here by the courts. He's humiliated. Trump always chickens out if anybody missed the TACO trade this is you can't come back from that to, to have world leaders know that.Economists say, Hey, don't even pay attention to his tariffs, because Trump always chickens out. Yeah. And that's right. He does, and that's why this bill is so important to him. Because he's competing with Joe Biden, he doesn't actually even care, except about the ways that he's shoveling money to his oligarchical entourage and to his own family and to himself. He doesn't care about legislation. This is all so he can puff up his ego and say he got something done that was bigger than Joe Biden. Never mind that. What Joe Biden did was actually to strengthen this country, to strengthen our alliances internationally with nations to push democracy, and to create jobs here, and to shore up our supply chains. It doesn't even matter to Trump. Trump is being revealed as a snowflake on all fronts. People shouldn’t buy or be afraid of the strongman image, because behind the bluster is a weak person who chickens out and claims mental anguish.What do you think about Trump’s chickening out and mental anguish? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

Please support our outside-the-Beltway journalism by becoming a subscriber to The Daily.Jake Tapper, CNN, and the mainstream media had been pushing Jake Tapper’s book hard. They were ready to dominate the news and ignore what Trump is doing for an entire summer. The table was set. They were ready to go. This was going to be the summer of Biden scandal, and the corporate media and their billionaire oligarchs were going to hold Democrats “accountable” for a “cover-up.”Then Joe Biden announced that he has stage four prostate cancer, and what already felt like unnecessary piling on by the media against a man who is no longer relevant in politics became stomach-turning bad taste.The corporate press has already decided that Biden, not Trump’s lies about lowering inflation and prices, or Trump’s current corrupt presidency, will be the major issue for Democrats in 2026 and 2028, but Democrats aren’t playing along.When House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was asked about Biden during a press conference, he answered, “There are Republicans who are peddling conspiracy theories and want us to look backward, at a time when they actually are taking health care away from the American people. No. As House Democrats, we’re going to look forward.”The thing about media conspiracies like the one Tapper is selling is that they only work if Democrats play along. The press can ask the same stale Biden questions for the next three years, but if Democrats use the opportunity to keep talking about what people really care about, the Biden questions will go away. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Yes, Jake Tapper, CNN, and Warner Brothers/Discovery have already sold a lot of books, and you better believe that there are plans in the works for an HBO miniseries or movie based on Tapper’s book. The book sales are only half of the story. The point of this drummed-up scandal, which is based on zero medical evidence, was to manufacture news and scandal while at the same time winning favor with Donald Trump.The manufactured scandal has bombed. The Biden book as a story was dead as soon as the ex-president announced his cancer diagnosis.The real story that no one is willing to discuss is why the mainstream media is willing to report on an ex-president while ignoring what the current president is doing. Trump is accepting a $400 million “bribe plane” from Qatar, but there are no tell-all books about that subject being breathlessly hyped on cable news. Remember, Tapper churned out his Biden book in less than six months, so the deals should have already been signed if the “bribe plane” books were in the works. There is a double standard. Trump can take bribes, but Joe Biden was not allowed to get old, or apparently sick. Jake Tapper’s book will soon be available at dollar stores everywhere, but the real “Original Sin” is the media’s sell-out to Donald Trump.What do you think about Jake Tapper’s “bombshell” withering away? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.Today’s video and live chat, which you can watch above, focused on the House Republican markup of the tax cut bill. The markups are revealing just how bad this bill will be for the American people. The Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Tom Barthold said that the committee’s analysis found that 2 million kids would be thrown off the child tax credit if the legislation passes.An exchange between Rep. Tom Souzzi (D-NY) and Barthold also revealed that none of Trump’s campaign promises are in the bill:Souzzi:  Okay on tips, the President said your tips will be a hundred percent yours. Does this tax bill continue the payroll tax on people's tips? Barthold: Yes. It, yes it does. Souzzi: On overtime, the president said your overtime will be tax-free. Does this bill continue the payroll tax on overtime?Barthold: It does not exempt overtime from the payroll tax.Souzzi: The president has said he is gonna remove taxes on Social Security. Does this bill remove taxes on Social Security benefits? The legislation provides an increased exemption amount for, but does it remove taxes on Social Security benefits is promised by the president?Barthold: It does not change Social Security taxes.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The markup hearings are revealing that the legislation is a complete disaster for Republicans because they reveal what is in the legislation. Trump’s bogus promises that he made during the campaign about taxes on overtime, tips, and Social Security were bogus. Trump is going to continue to tax low-wage workers, seniors, and those who put in long hours. The tax cut bill is a scam that is designed to transfer assets from those who have the least to those who have the most. That’s the point of the legislation. The spending cuts will harm the people who need programs the most to reward those who need a tax cut the least. It is not complicated math. Democrats are using the platform of the committee markups to show the American people exactly what this legislation will do.Republicans are far from the finish line on this bill. They are putting the pieces together right now, and even if it gets through the House, the legislation will be dramatically changed in the Senate.What Republicans are revealing about their priorities and who they really are for is a disaster for them, and a boon for Democratic election hopes in 2026.What do you think about House tax cut legislation? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

  The Daily is journalism for people who care about democracy and freedom from outside the Beltway. Please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber.The Trump presidency is really nothing more than a scheme to exploit the office to make as much money for Donald Trump and his associates as possible over the next four years.There is a level of corruption and grift from this guy. I will say the only time he manages to impress me is how greedy he is and how he doesn't care how things look to anybody. Here he is going take this $400 million “gift” from Qatar a foreign state, and he is doing it without congressional permission.And then this is a gift that he's going to charge the taxpayers to turn into Air Force One and then turn it back into a private jet after that, after he leaves office. The only good news I heard in there was that he was, is he really planning on leaving? Great. That was a moment of excitement.But other than that he's gonna charge the taxpayers twice for this on top of taking what is he giving them for this? What is he giving them? That is the question, and we're never gonna find that out. But, we did get Richie Torres requested, has formally requested an the Office of Inspector General to investigate the legality of this gift, and let's all remember that the Office of Inspector General is where they do actual independent audits, unlike DOGE, and they have experts who know what to look for and how to do a professional audit. That is very different than DOGE.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The United States has never seen a president blatantly monetize the presidency for their own gain. As Sen. Chris Murphy noted, Trump’s actions as president are about lining his own pockets. There are no actions that are in the best interests of the American people.The only interests that matter in the current administration are limited to Donald Trump and how he can corruptly twist the presidency into a personal cash machine. Donald Trump has been convicted of fraud in the state of New York. The current president is nearly a three dozen times over convicted felon.There is a desensitization and normalization that occurs in a country when a leader is consistently corrupt, but the $400 million plane for personal use is corruption taken to a new level.The American people should never sit back and accept Trump’s corruption. Public outrage and voting for candidates who vow to investigate and end corruption are the only ways to make it stop.What Trump is doing is definitely not corruption as usual, even by his low standards.What do you think about Trump’s latest corrupt plan? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people, and you can support our work by becoming a subscriber.One of the most frequent questions that the American people are wrestling with is what can be realistically done about Donald Trump and his presidency. The secret to Trump’s power isn’t his willingness to ignore the law. The secret to Trump’s power isn’t that he appears to have no conscience and only thinks about himself. The real secret to Donald Trump’s power is that Republicans control the House and the Senate and they have chosen to not use their power to stand up to Trump. If Republicans in the House and Senate chose to act as an equal branch of government, they would move to hold Trump accountable. They would act as a check on Trump’s presidency and put a stop to his power grabs. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Republicans are so fearful of retribution and the hold that Trump has on the majority of the Republican Party that they refuse to use their power to check the president, as our system of checks and balances was designed to do.The way to disempower Trump and his presidency is to elect candidates that will pledge to assert the role of the legislative branch as a co-equal part of government. Once Republicans lose power in Congress, Trump will also lose power, because he is only taking the power that congressional Republicans are allowing him to have.The other way to disempower Trump is through protest. Protests shatter the administration’s propaganda about mandates and popularity. Mass protests are disempowering because they represent a public rejection by large groups of Americans of this president and his policies. It is impossible for a president to claim that they are doing what the American people want if the people are loudly sending the opposite message.America can’t get rid of Trump without Republicans in Congress voting for impeachment and conviction, but they can disempower the president right now and lay the groundwork for taking back power next year.What to do about Trump was just one part of our more extended discussion. Please watch the video above and share your thoughts in the comments below.Thank you Margit's Musings, Ellen Harrison, Angela Teiken Heitzman, David Weitzman, Maureen Spurr, and many others for tuning into my live via Sarah Jones and Jason Easley. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for people, not the billionaires and corporations. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Sarah Jones described Indiana, PA and the protest:Indiana, PA  is a little blue dot inside of that red county, but it is a very small town. It's called rural. So it is important to note that people are down here protesting. It's cold and rainy today, but there's a lot of people here. Not as many as we had at the protest last week. Sorry about that. And now they're chanting No. And I do wanna note before I go down here to show you who is out here that Donald Trump's support among his most loyal constituents of rural Americans is suffering significant erosion.Although the only group that Trump has seen a rise in support from is small-town voters. And this is a very small town. So now we are here in this small rural town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where Trump came just a mile and a half away for a campaign rally. This is a mayday protest. They're protesting against oligarchy, protesting the Trump administration's autocracy attacks on fundamental freedoms like due process attacks on the social safety net.Skyrocketing prices and crumbling economy, widespread concerns over specific government policies, and a palpable sense of anxiety about where this country is going. Sarah also interviewed Indiana County Democratic Committee Chair Lynne Alvine who discussed the importance of rural Pennsylvania communities in winning the state for Democrats: I want people to know is that in Pennsylvania, it is the rural counties that keep us purple, keep us in the game in terms of the presidential of the statewide election.We have some big cities, and they are a wonderful good Democratic strongholds in some cases, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, those are all cities. But if the rural voters come out, we can raise the margins so we can narrow the margins, I should say, just enough that we win the statewide elections, we can win the presidential election.Now, this last presidential election. I'm still having trouble believing that Pennsylvania did not go for Harris. We had such a strong, a strong campaign here and such, such good energy for her. Watch the full interview:Donald Trump and the Republicans seem to be taking rural and small-town America for granted.People in these communities are angry and they too are coming out to oppose changes that they did not want or vote for.What do you think about rural and small-town America coming out to protest? Share your thoughts in the comments below.Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

I hosted a Substack Live today where I spent a fair amount of time talking about impeachment. In the wake of reports that Democrats have very little interest in impeaching Trump, it is a fair question to ask: Is there any value left in impeaching Trump again if Democrats win back the House?Some of the reactions to my story for PoliticusUSA suggest that there might be a misunderstanding about the limits of impeachment.Impeachment only has one function, and that is to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors. If the president is impeached by the full House, a trial is held in the Senate, where it takes a two/thirds vote (67 votes) to convict and remove a president from office. An impeachment will not stop Trump from doing what he is doing. It will not limit his power or take power away from him in any way. All impeachment does is set the stage for the president to be tried, and the penalty for conviction is removal from office. The problem is that Democrats will never have enough votes in the Senate to convict and remove Trump.The American people have already demonstrated that they don’t care about impeachment. Is it worth impeaching a president who has no shame and can’t be publicly shamed?A Special Note: Thank you Dawn Marie Galtieri, Sandra Norris, Mrs.Liv, Rachel Hendricks, BARBARA FULLERTON, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for our next live video in the app.Would impeachment only serve to distract from what Trump has done in office by creating a process that would derail potential investigations by House Democrats into other areas?The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The cold reality is that if Democrats win back the House, Trump will be a lame duck. The same collection of evidence against Trump could be done with high-level committee hearings.Democrats say that Republicans won’t do their jobs, so impeachment is pointless. Even if a future Democratic House majority convicted Trump, since Republicans control the Senate, there is no guarantee that there would be an impeachment trial.The Constitution only requires that a trial be held. It doesn’t say how long the trial has to be or specify what the trial must include. Senate Republicans could hold Trump’s trial for an hour on a Saturday, then vote to dismiss the charges. The way to hold Trump accountable and strip him of power is for Democrats to win elections. There is no magic remedy outside of the ballot box to fix this, and impeaching Trump again won’t accomplish anything.Sarah and I will be hosting another Substack Live on Tuesday at 11 AM, so please join us.What do you think? Is it worth impeaching Trump again? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people that fights for democracy. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.After 60 Minutes went public with how they are being supervised by their corporate bosses and the threat to journalistic independence that they face, Sarah Jones was guest on WCPT’s Chew’s Views where she discussed the strategy of Trump appeasement: We have to have shared reality. If we are going to have elections, if we're gonna have a political. If we're gonna have a democracy, we actually have to have shared reality. Just this week two Scotland Yard detectives who were investigating the Murdoch tabloids said that the new evidence that was brought forth means they would've considered the man who is now chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, Will Lewis to be a criminal suspect in covering up wrongdoing.Now, they knew about that. Those accusations have been around before they gave him that job. And I just wonder, why would you put that person in charge of one of the nation's leading papers before an election when one of the people running is an autocrat. That's troubling.And then also just to buttress this point, Bill Owens resigned from 60 Minutes on Tuesday, because of Paramount. Having kind of oversight into their stories and supervising the content in new ways. And he felt that he lost independence that he needed for honest journalism.And I think if people see like all that erosion coming from places, these pillars of our democracy that we used to be able to count on, and that's all, they make those choices. They can say, Donald Trump threatened us, or whatever. You know what? No, you made a choice because of your merger to appease this man.And there should be shame with those choices. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Appeasing An Autocrat Is StupidIn any part of society, appeasing an autocrat never works.   In journalism, holding people accountable is the job. And that whole kind of cowardice that we are seeing from so many people, where they, oh, I need to go down to Mar-a-Lago and kiss the ring, because we've gotta find a way to get along.. That does not work. And so that is a dumb thing to do. You cannot appease an autocrat. It is never going to work. So it is a stupid strategy. All it does is kick the can down the road a little bit.Those who put themselves ahead of their professional obligations and their country are betraying the American people. The corporate media seems to believe that their bending to Trump will all be washed away and forgotten, but they have damaged the ability of the free press to hold any president or person with power accountable today and in the future. There is shame in the damage that they are doing to the country, and it is up to the American people to make them feel it.What do you think about the stupid strategy of appeasement? Join the conversation in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.The American people are relentlessly turning out to oppose Donald Trump and his policies. In a growing sign that there is no mandate for Trump, Sarah Jones visited a protest in the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where the estimated number of protesters doubled from two weeks ago in a place that Trump won by 39 points. Attendees showed up with their signs and anti-Trump t-shirts and lined the same streets that transform into a Bedford Falls in tribute to their most famous homegrown son, Jimmy Stewart, and his iconic Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life.Indiana, PA is one of those places in Western Pennsylvania that was once solidly Democratic, but since the year 2000, as years of economic struggle and population loss mounted, Republicans took over. By the time Donald Trump faced Kamala Harris in 2024, Indiana, PA supported Trump over Harris 69%-30%, so to see a protest in this part of America against Trump is telling.Local police on the scene told The Daily that the protest was very peaceful, which has been a trademark of the anti-Trump protests in 2025. What was even more revealing was the lack of support for Donald Trump in the streets. This isn’t to suggest that places like Indiana will suddenly swing back to being blue, but rather that on some level, there is discontent with the administration, even in the most supportive areas.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The American people are angry. One of Trump’s biggest allies in the House, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, represents this district. Reschenthaler is the deputy House Whip, and he is avoiding his constituents by not holding town halls.The anger is real, and real change comes when people join together in towns big and small to stand up for American values.What do you think of the protests against Trump in small-town America? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is journalism for the people from outside the Beltway. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.In the micro sense, Donald Trump’s administration looks like chaos with no reasoning or rationale behind it, but when all of the pieces, from the breaking of alliances to the tariffs and trade wars, are put together, a pattern emerges.As Sarah said on the Chew’s Views radio show on Monday, which you can listen to above:  In my opinion about what Trump is doing. I would have to say that he is trying to destroy a lot of the pieces that make the United States that have made the United States the superpower that it was.And why is he doing that? I really couldn't say is he doing it on purpose? I don't know. But if you just look at what he's doing, that, that is what he's accomplishing. He's done it with these tariffs and he's doing it, this isolationist policy, his siding up with Russia that is what he is undermining the United States and we see all of the, we see Europe and Canada working together to cut the United States out of their supply chains and their responses to attacks on global democracy because they know they can't trust the United States. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.That's really what his tariffs did. They undermined the trust and respect that people from all countries around the globe had for the United States economy. I don't think there's a more effective way to destroy a country than to do that. All of the usual excuses don’t add up. Trump is crazy. Trump is erratic. Trump is cognitively declining. All of those ideas could be true, but they don’t explain why the overarching rationale for this administration seems to be weakening America while claiming to strengthen it.It could be because Trump and crew think that rich people make America great. Under Donald Trump, the United States is moving toward no longer being a superpower. The reality that Trump is triggering an American decline is something that the press and experts largely ignore.. Donald Trump is undermining the US economy, international relations, and the institutions that have made the United States a world leader. America is being destroyed and undermined by a man who has shown nothing but contempt for the country and the principles that it was built on.What do you think Trump is doing to America’s status as a superpower? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The new big lie of Trump 2.0 is that tariffs are about jobs. The Trump administration is spreading the myth that tariffs will create jobs by bringing manufacturing back to the United States. All those people who said we are voting for him because of his economic policy and we're voting for him. All these business leaders we're voting for him because, he's going to make us a great economy. Well, here you go guys. Exactly what we all told you was gonna happen is happening now, and it isn't so great.I was recently on BBC Radio Wales discussing the difference betweenBiden and Trump’s policies: When we look at Trump's industrial policy, he doesn't have a policy for actually creating these jobs here.And if we look at what we just had with, uh, former President Joe Biden, he was trying to reinvigorate American manufacturing with the Chips and Science Act and, and other ways of bringing manufacturing here. Those are kind of a lot of clean energy manufacturing jobs that actually Trump has been killing.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.So there's a disparity between what he hopes to achieve with these tariffs because even if the tariffs work that way, there's a lot of disagreement that they would actually work that way. They have to be met with an industrial policy that would encourage manufacturing here. But a lot of business leaders are saying, you know, hey, even if we made this stuff here, we get a lot of our supplies from countries that you're tariffing.So I'm not sure that this is a fully fleshed-out strategy.Biden understood a reality that Trump has refused to grasp. Trump’s administration is defined by looking backward. Trump thinks that he can force jobs to come back to the United States, which will never fully happen.The Biden administration looked forward and tried to create the jobs of the future, which is how Biden was able to reimagine and bring back manufacturing jobs that Trump killed during his first term.Biden caused a manufacturing boom in the United States. Things were already booming when Trump took office. All Trump had to do was leave it alone, but instead, he defunded Biden’s manufacturing jobs programs and launched a trade war.The Trump policy isn’t really about creating jobs or bringing jobs back. It is about Trump trying to build his legacy and not caring who he harms in the process.Trump has no policy. If he were serious about jobs and the economy, he would do what Biden did.What do you think about the difference between Trump and Biden on jobs? Share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter. We fight for democracy and freedom while discussing topics that big media often ignore. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Understanding Where The Presidential Election Stands Right NowThere is so much data flying around as the election is less than two months away that it is helpful to condense some of it and place it in a more understandable form.The video above is part of a series that we’ll be doing through election day titled Mapping It Out. The video contains some different points than this post, and you get to see the maps a little more easily so give it a look.Our first map shows why Pennsylvania is the key to this election. The map is not what I think will happen but what would happen if every state followed their historical pattern. Trump ends up leading in the Electoral College 262-257.That is the scenario that Trump is hoping for. (All maps done on 270toWin.com):Here is our map of the top three swing states, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona. A lot of other states get lumped into this category, but these three are the ones that are consistently the closest, and both campaigns have made Pennsylvania the epicenter of the race. Michigan wasn’t included because since Harris entered the race, the state has become a bigger challenge for Trump, so his campaign is putting more time into Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.Democrats lead 257-235 and need to win any one of those states to win the White House.This is closer to the reality of where the election is now.Our third map shows what would happen if each state followed its historical voting trend. Pennsylvania goes for Harris, and Democrats win the House with 276 Electoral College Votes. Most of the current swing states are not as swingy as the media likes to suggest. North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona have voted Democratic once since 2000. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have voted Republican once since 2000. The nation is in the middle of a demographic shift, so things will change, but just looking strictly at history, states have been fairly consistent.Our last map is what I call our today most likely scenario, The Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan stays together as it has in every election since 1988. Georgia, where Trump has consistently led, and Republicans are doing everything to hand him the state, narrowly flips back to being red, but North Carolina, where there is a gubernatorial race that Democrats lead by double digits on this map, goes blue for the first time since 2008. Kari Lake and the Arizona Senate weigh Trump down a tad, and Harris narrowly keeps Arizona blue. After all of the twists and turns of the 2024 election, Democrats end up with roughly the same total of electoral college votes that they got in 2020 (303 vs 306 in 2020) and keep the White House.As new data comes in, I’ll be here to Map It Out and show you where this election is heading.What do you think of our new feature? If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I’ll answer them in a future episode. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter. We are less than 100 subscribers away from our goal of 1,000 paid subscribers. If you find our work valuable, please join our community by subscribing today.Excerpts from the podcast episode:The Importance Of The Taylor Swift EndorsementA lot of media are trying to downplay the Taylor Swift endorsement. They say celebrity endorsements don't mean anything. And I think that's usually true because there isn't this action, this call to action, and that people don't have the kind of sway that Taylor Swift has. But she's this global brand. And so we already saw by 11:00 this morning the General Services Administration spokesperson told NPR that by 11:00, they had 306,422 visitors to vote.gov from Taylor Swift's URL that she shared on Instagram. Now that's 11:00. So she made that endorsement, what, 1030 11:00 last night? So 12 hours overnight and two, you know, like that's overnight. I would imagine that number is going to grow during the day today probably quite a bit. That seems like a lot of people to be signing up to register to vote. It's a lot of people. And there's an exponential factor involved, because if this if her fans go to get their friends or family members also registered to vote, it kind of there's a there's a mushroom effect and it just keeps kind of building outward. So maybe 306,000 people visited, but. Each of those people, or even a 10th of those people, get somebody else to register to vote. That number goes up a lot more. I think it matters. It matters a great deal because of, and let's be honest, who her audience is, right? It isn't old white cable news viewers. Her audience is women. They're Gen Zs. It's a lot of people. A lot of young women are turning 18. 18 to 24. Women need to have autonomy over their bodies. That is an age where, you know, unfortunately, women are targeted for rape and for, for violent offenses that this is just a really dangerous age for women, and they need to have this autonomy. So I'm really glad that she's sending them to the register to vote. And you know, she urged. I thought the whole statement was great. I mean, everybody's kind of pointed out how well she laid that out. She didn't tell people who to support. She told them, you know, go do your research. This is what I think is important.The Unity Movement Around Kamala HarrisI don't remember which piece it was, but maybe the Taylor Swift piece, but a little bit of what makes me feel really positive as a woman is the Taylor Swift endorsement. She, as we all know, is a white woman. There has been such a failure on the part of white women to stand up for black women to include them in fights for justice efforts. It felt really good to see Taylor Swift, the pop princess, endorse Kamala Harris. And to see this, there is this coalition that's coming together. I think there's a call coming up next week or the week after that, which is rural voters with black women for Kamala. I mean, this is the kind of unity that we need in this country. If we are going to come back together and be the powerful country trying to live up to our ideals that we will never achieve but should always be aspiring to. And we have been divided by this man. I've been writing about that since the Obama era, so it did feel really good for me. She brought up that when she responded to the race question, she started talking about how Donald Trump brings up race to divide this country, and people are tired of it. I have been talking about race as used to divide people since President Obama when, you know, that was obviously what Republicans use.Donald Trump was the original birther. So it felt full circle to have this coalition is coming together to say, we are not going to believe we're not going to fall for this stuff. We're not going to let you destroy this country and our respect for one another, our humanity. And while I know not everyone is going to come together, and there are a lot of people that have been radicalized by Donald Trump and none of us seem to be coming together to make this a real stand and to hopefully win this election.I know it's going to be a super close election, but my faith in humanity the day that he won that election, I lost faith in my neighbors. I lost faith in so many people in this country I could not wrap my head around. How could you? How could you elect a man who was on tape admitting to serially sexually assaulting women? Is that what you guys think of us as, you know, to think of women? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz they do bring the joy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter; if you enjoy our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Let’s not forget that after the Biden Trump debate, voters told the media they were really turned off by Trump’s lies and behavior. But the media decided, as I knew they would, that Biden had lost the debate even though he tried to discuss policy, which they now claim is why VP Kamala Harris needs to do more interviews with *them* rather than the local radio shows and CNN interview she and Walz have been doing.But it’s been just two months since the last debate, which reshaped the entire political landscape. It’s September of an election year, and many voters don’t know much about Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has been in 6 presidential general election debates, while Harris has been in none. The stakes are exceptionally high. Donna Brazile said the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia “is probably the most consequential debate in American history.”The VP  has surged in public and private polling but still needs to define herself and her “new way forward” agenda to the American voters, specifically swing voters and those who don’t pay much attention to politics, before Trump can during the NBC News presidential debate. For this reason, I don’t think we should expect Harris to do a full knockout punch of Donald Trump like I’m sure many would love to watch, but more of an appeal to voters on the margins. Many of those voters don’t even watch debates or conventions but rather judge them based on short social media clips, so Harris has to do enough to be a force and go viral but not aggressively focus on Trump in a negative way.Trump is the most annoying character in politics. He knows how to steal the limelight with whining and negativity. It’s time to pivot, which is what Harris does.The truth is, as I told the BBC, at this late stage, this will be more of a vibe election (wanna keep that democratic republic and your freedoms, want competent governance?)  than a deep policy election - though I’m not sure we ever actually have policy elections since the advent of the television. So her voters need to understand Harris’ principles and priorities, not a deep dive into her white papers.To that end, Harris, who is known for her dedication to preparation and has had briefing-book cram sessions while on the campaign trail in her short 7-week candidacy, had a multi-day debate camp including 90-minute mock debates at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh with Philippe Reines playing Trump with Karen Dunn, a Democratic lawyer and Harris’ former domestic policy adviser this past weekend, while ex-president Donald trump has done  “more work preparing for the 2024 debates than he ever did in 2016 and 2020” according to the NYT.Trump, who wanted to run away from this debate, and his team spent all of that time behind the scenes negotiating the debate set-up while Trump outwardly attacked the debate as unfair to him. Trump didn’t want the mics unmuted: “Mr. Trump has privately told associates, ‘I’m not going to let her do to me what she did to Mike.’ He was happy to let his advisers negotiate the muting of microphones when the candidates are not talking.” The Harris team had been preparing for those moments, which have been a viral successes, wanted to confront Trump like she did Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh as a senator. But she’s also managed to use this whole muted mic debate to paint Trump as someone whose team doesn’t trust him because he’s so out of control, someone who has to be handled carefully because he’s a child. She can do this with a simple glance to the camera and a raised eyebrow, along with her behavior serving as a direct foil to Trump’s low brow, lie-festing.I’m expecting to see threads of this throughout the debate from Harris, coupled with a dismissiveness of Trump’s behavior if he acts up like he often does. as she said in a 2016 senate campaign debate, “So, there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.”One of Harris’ popular lines from her rallies has been, “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face!”  She also says, “I took on perpetrators of all kinds; I know Donald Trump’s type!”  Both of these are things she can say that might get Trump upset enough to show his true personality, which would be a loss for him. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Harris has hurdles to overcome in this debate, like making sure voters know more about her and what she stands for. So she needs to be making a case to those people, not just cutting Trump down to size when he tries to bully her like he does all candidates he’s debated, which her base will want to see. The VP’s speech on the closing night of the DNC made her case for the rule of law and America remaining a democracy can be built by her mentioning that former VP Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney have endorsed her along with a host of former Trump officials who are concerned about the national security threat he poses. But she’s got a specific way of depriving Trump of oxygen that I see her deploying, which accomplishes both: It’s the prosecutor dealing with a child with a dismissive smile and moving on to the meat of things: Depriving Trump of oxygen for his bigotry, bullying, and misogyny while letting people see him trying it.  Democratic research group Blueprint found that voters are twice as likely to be moved by ads featuring contrast and positive lines about Harris as by negative Trump ads.A gish galloper like Trump deluges their opponent with arguments, then extends and builds on what they’ve established as mistakes of their opponent throughout the debate. Sound familiar? This is part of why President Biden lost a debate to someone who lied almost the entire time. Biden was trying to make serious policy points, but with a weak voice, a stutter, and under exhaustion from illness. Bad faith debaters require seasoned moderators who don’t fall for basically dishonest tactics and a media that doesn’t do so after the fact. That is not what we have in the U.S. right now, as our “both sides” media simply is unwilling or incapable of covering Donald Trump in a factual, informative way.If it’s facts versus feelings, feelings are going to win. So facts matter a lot, especially to the Left, but if a debate is won by feelings, we can see why Trump won against Biden in the first debate.We know the media doesn’t really care about policy because they disregarded Biden’s policy points in favor of Trump’s bombastic thuggery. Inexperienced debate moderators often fall for this kind of nonsense, and maybe our entire media culture has been primed to reward drama more than informative content. But voters need to hear who Harris is. They need to know what she means by, “We’re not going back!”Also, remember, while the media praised Trump after the debate against Biden, voters were turned off by Trump’s lies and hostility. This means Harris can set the parameters for the debate by setting herself up as the credible expert by pointing out Trump’s weakest, most bad-faith argument and dismantling the logic behind it like only a good prosecutor can while taking down his credibility, maybe asking why he is so dishonest, and then pointing out that she knows Trump’s style is to dump a bunch of lies on his opponent and leave them to clean it up, but she wants to use this time productively to reach the American people out of respect for their time and their votes so she’s going to focus on her forward agenda. When he continues, she can do that steely smile she gave Kavanaugh and say, “My opponent won't let go of this one issue when I've brought up a dozen important policies to protect Americans’ freedoms. He's like a broken record, folks, but I believe Americans are tired of Trump-era divisiveness and want to move beyond it.”We can trust that Harris is ready for Trump’s ad hominem, cheap personal attacks — when he stoops to sexism and racism because he will.  The only question is how he will do this, will he become physically aggressive like he was to Clinton, or will he try to reduce Kamala Harris to being a sexualized, pretty face like he already has. Trump has already shown that he doesn’t respect Harris’ intelligence and has fallen for his own party’s false rhetoric about her. He has been seen calling her a “f–ing b***h” in front of his son, showing his contempt for the Vice President, whom I suspect he fears. “In private, he uses misogynistic language to describe her and gossips about her past romantic relationships, including with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco,” NYT.One way to reply to that if he brings that up is, “You seem to have a lot of problems with women. This is exactly the behavior we can expect from someone who was found liable for sexual assault. This is the man who brags about getting Roe overturned. What kind of power would you give a man like that over your daughter’s body?”There’s also the Elizabeth Warren technique, who took down Michael Bloomberg in 60 seconds during a 2020 primary debate with this: “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a convicted felon with 34 felony counts found guilty by a jury of his peers, to whom he has shown nothing but contempt. He thinks the law doesn’t apply to him because he’s rich, but I believe in law and order, our duty to protect the innocent and hold the guilty accountable.”Hopefully, Trump will be asked about his comments about how he’d implement the mass deportation he keeps mentioning, saying he’d use police and soldiers to deport at least 12 million undocumented people, and it will be bloody.  What do you expect from our media? Do you think they’ll fail the co

This is a free edition of The Daily. If you enjoy our newsletter and would like to support our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Kamalot is approaching the Barbie movie zeitgeist and there are just 100 days left to go to face down the dystopian fascist threat of a Trump/Vance administration, as Viktor Orban has been demonstrating for many years, once these days are up. Autocrats get in, it's really hard to get them out. They change the law, they change the constitution so that it is legal for them to no longer hold elections and to protect their power.No matter what the media says, there are no one-day dictatorships. History teaches us this, which is one reason why Republicans are trying to control history books and education. So when we hear Trump say to his supporters that this is the last election that they need to vote in, we need to realize that his past election denial is leading to this argument for why it's best if we don't have elections anymore. The target is our pluralistic democracy, which, even the George W. Bush Presidential Center said was the lifeblood of a genuine democracy. That is what the Trump movement is against. So they're picking up where the insurrectionists on January 6th left things after their deadly assault on the 2020 election, if someone tells you who they are, Believe them.If you're not sure, look to Florida or Texas or Iowa, where conservatives are weaponizing the law in order to dictate what kids are allowed to read and even what they're allowed to say sometimes. The Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, who is the leader of the pro-Trump Project 2025, said the second revolution, which is a counter-revolution if you will.We'll be bloodless if the left allows it to be. So they're giving a lot of signals about what's intended here. JD Vance introduced himself to the American public and at his first campaign event he was introduced by a Republican who warned of a civil war if Donald Trump loses this election. They are telling us these folks are fighting to reinstate conservative dictator kings over the United States, which is the opposite of.Freedom is the opposite of democracy. They're neomonarchists—if you want to think of them that way, think plutocrats. They are seeking this structural change so that Trump never has to leave office again. And I think that really doesn't sound great. It's fair to say a bit based on that, but this election is an emergency.Like the house is on fire, grab your stuff kind of emergency. Our tornado is bearing down. Get out to vote. If you think of January 6th as this inside political coup that was supported by large numbers of House Republicans and backed up by this violent coup on the ground by Trump supporters, that this is well funded.And if you're unclear about the power of money, In our political structures in our system. We just saw political donors push President Biden out of the 2024 election race. Now, two billionaire donors, Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman, just said in interviews last week that they hope that Kamala Harris replaces the FTC chair, Lena Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission.That enforces the nation's antitrust laws, consumer protection laws, the opposite of big business. And normally, if you think about it, these positions are for seven years. The commission is headed by five commissioners. They are nominated by the president. And conferred by the Senate, then they serve seven years at a time.So when we are wondering why we can't get rid of DeJoy at the post office because of norms, you got to wonder then why. It's okay to get rid of an FTC chair because she's doing her job because the billionaires want her to get to be done with her. Republicans are running this adjudicated rapist for president who was caught on a hot mic bragging about and whose first wife accused him of rape and only retracted it when he was running for president the first time. Trump is also all over the Epstein files. So this is what they have to work with, right? They and have a vice president who implied that women should stay in abusive relationships and wants to ban abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, because he refers to that as an inconvenience for women and girls, I don't think it should be an excuse sort of thing. He wants a federal response to prevent women from traveling to states where abortion is legal. He just attacked childless cat ladies, and he wants higher taxes. He has advocated for that for childless people in the past.When he was pushed yesterday, I think it was, by Trey Gowdy to apologize because conservative women are upset and offended. Suddenly it's okay to be offended, but only if you are MAGA. If you're a liberal, you're a Democrat who doesn't like the way they're talking about women. Forget you, you're just a snowflake.But if it's conservative women, then that matters. Vance refused to apologize. He said he was sorry he offended cats. So in case anyone isn't clear why Trump chose JD Vance is the kind of person who was apologizing for his wife, not being white, but trying to appeal to the racist Trump base by offering up that she is a good mom. So that's what women can be. You could just offer your service as a good mom. JD Vance about his wife. Obviously, she's not a white person. In other words, he is the kind of person who would do what Pence would not. He has no moral core. He has no loyalty even to his own wife over his personal ambition and desire for power.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.So that's what JD Vance is about. And, after the AP withdrew a fact check claiming that JD Vance did not have sex with a couch, it hits extra hard, if you will, that a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention showed Vance, who has been a senator for less than two years with the net rating of negative 6. He is the least liked VP nominee post convention since 1980. And the first person to have a net negative favorability rating. Vance was also a weak candidate in bright red, Ohio. Good for him. This isn't really new and it would have been predictable. It is nonetheless a level of fail that should have been hard to imagine prior to this.But this is typical Trump, right? He had to choose someone who made him Look good and someone who was super loyal to him instead of someone who would put the country first, who would help him win an election even, and instead of someone who is competent because JD Vance is not competent yet. And this is just like Putin and other dictators, right?They prioritize loyalty. We do have positive news from the Democrats, the pro-freedom party, if you will, at this point. Kamelot, as I said is approaching the Barbie movie zeitgeist, in my opinion. It just keeps gathering steam. And yeah, she is the underdog. So make no mistake about that. She's the underdog coming into this election so late, but the momentum seems to be real.People do not want to go back to Donald Trump. The vice president has raised 200 million in less than a week. 66 percent of that is from first-time donors. They have over 170,000 new volunteers have signed up for the campaign. And their first weekend of action included 2300 events in battleground states.They're off and running. But this is organic and it's grassroots support. This is all proliferating from the win with black women call and what is starting to give this Barbie movie feeling because it just keeps growing. More and more people are excited about Kamala Harris. They're considering her; even people who voted for Trump before vote.org say it's registered more than 100,000 new voters since President Biden withdrew from the race. Voter registration has increased. But it's starting to give this Barbie movie feeling because it's just keeps growing. More and more people are excited about Kamala Harris. They're considering her, even people who voted for Trump before.Vote.org says it's registered more than 100,000 new voters since President Biden withdrew from the race. Voter registration increased by 700 percent within days of Harris being the presumed nominee, so that is huge energy. Their voter data shows that's happening in Texas, Florida, California, New York, and Illinois.Every single state, though, has had over 100 percent increase compared to the previous month in voter registration. 84 percent are younger voters aged 18 to 34. 18 percent are 18 year olds. And the top 10 states for new voters are Texas, California, Florida, New York, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.And I think I forgot one. The Harris campaign has held its first youth phone bank with Chasten Buttigieg and launched a youth Discord channel, and they got more than 500 signups for students for Harris chapters across states. So they're doing great things. They're just, and it just keeps growing. You know, tonight they're doing the call for women, which is going to bring together all the coalitions that just had their calls for women of various factions.It's bringing everybody together, the unification call, if you will. And I think that's, people are really excited. Tonight they're also having the white dudes for Kamala call. And so you're just seeing over and over again people showing up to these calls. There are so many calls.There's a call for disabled voters. There's a call for people who have cats and dogs. I will be at that one as well. And just to give you an idea, CNN did this profile on Trump voters in Macomb County, Michigan, which is, has been voting for Trump, and they're considering Kamala. Some of the people they interviewed were the largest crowd ever seen for Kamala Harris in the Republican stronghold of Forsyth County, Georgia.These are places we wouldn't expect this kind of energy. 15,000 people have RSVP for Kamala Harris's rally in Atlanta on Tuesday. So the energy is just going and going. I think there's a lo

The Daily is committed to democracy, freedom, and the power of independent media. To never miss a newsletter or an episode of our podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber.In this special edition of the podcast, we talk about President Biden’s Oval Office address and what it means to the country and democracy.All quotes from the podcast have been lightly edited but are transcribed as spoken.Joe Biden Is The Real Deal For a bit in this speech tonight, he was reminding me of Jimmy Stewart. I had this like Over and over again. I kept seeing Jimmy Stewart in his face. He has that shucks americana Yeah, but love of country love of just a genuineness and like uh, an authenticity and and An openness and a care for this country in a in a vulnerable way that we don't see very often I do want to highlight one thing.He said in his speech that I thought it was Well, there were a couple of points that were really touching to me. What I really liked. The great thing about America is here. Kings and dictators do not rule. The people do. History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. And that is something that we talk about all the time because it is the truth. But people need to be reminded of that at a time when corporations have so much power. And as we just saw, rich donors think they're running the world. And for voters to be reminded, you have this power, this is your country. I thought that was, and we don't go for dictators and kings here, and was that not a kick in the you know what to you know who? The Age Shoe Is On The Other FootThe guy who has been absolutely has been hammered for years, but his age was the one who sat there and made the really convincing argument that it was time for a new generation and time to pass the torch.Well, he literally made the argument for why Trump should not be elected. I mean, the same guy who just been getting blistered for weeks on end for being old, having a bad debate, sat there and just said, We need new voices, new leadership, a new generation. And that's exactly what I'm saying. Once again, that's a Joe Biden took you to the woodshed kind of moment and he delivered it with the folksy, veneer on top of it.Not that it's fake, though. A veneer is fake. So that's not really what I mean. But the presentation was, he wrapped it in folksiness. Yeah. But it was a, he took everything they were attacking him with little jiu-jitsu to move there and he just put up his shield and said, right back at you, Trump, take that and stuff it.And now Trump's and all the arguments that were used against Biden apply to Trump. Yeah. And he's like, Hey, look at this new generation of leaders that I helped. Those are it. Yeah. I mean, this is a guy again, the book ends. I keep coming back to this. Yeah. But. For me, the bookend of Joe Biden, the Violence Against Women at Women Act back in the 1990s.And now, we put first vice president female vice president, and then we have, he's hopefully ushering in the first female president. Isn't a fascinating part of his legacy and career. The fact that he was added to Barack Obama's ticket to be the experienced statesman, balancing. comforting presence because Obama was considered such an inexperienced unknown by many.And then he becomes president and he uses those same qualities to elevate Kamala Harris. And as you just said, hopefully get her elected to the next president. When you said bookends, those to me are almost two perfect bookends. Yeah, that's true too. I mean, that's a different point, but they're both true. And that's again, we're getting, we keep coming back to this, but it's his service to the country. Joe Biden: A Gift To The CountryWe keep coming back to this, but it's his service to the country. And, and I do want to bring out one more quote from him tonight because I thought this was a, I don't think the speech could have been better, frankly. The defense of democracy is more important than any title.I draw strength and find joy in working for the American people. But this sacred task of perfecting our union isn't about me, it's about you, your families, your future. It's about we, the people. And that is Joe Biden. What a gift to this country. Yeah, again, the right person at the right time. Yeah. Saying the right things.Yeah. And the right, with the person with the right values. I don't think we get enough. After Trump's lack of values for four years, he was the right person to come in and help reset everything. Decency. Yep, he brought back decency. Unfortunately, we haven't. He wasn't able to, but he tried really hard to restore norms.What did you think of President Biden’s Oval Office address? Share your thoughts or questions in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily stands by democracy and freedom through thick and thin. Join the fight to save American democracy by becoming a subscriber.We thought maybe you could use a friendly on this difficult day, so here are some quotes from the edition of the podcast. The quotes are lightly edited but transcribed as spoken.Joe Biden Is An Exceptional President There, there are presidents that have really had a lasting legacy on the country. And a lot of them never get their credit for that. They had, they had accomplishments that never really get credited. Obama was the rare exception and somebody who had the personality And the charisma and had the accomplishments. That is not normal. Yeah, that's not normal. I mean, you have, you have, before Obama, everybody compares him to Reagan, which is justified because you've got to go back to Reagan, who was the previous transformational president. But then, once you get behind Reagan, you have to go back to Roosevelt. Those presidents don't happen very often. Harry Truman and Joe Biden are the kind of presidents who come in and do effective things but they don't get credit because maybe they don't look the part or they don't act the part. They're a lot more common than Trump, who is just this amalgamation of everything that's going on, which is bad about modern politics and what candidates are evaluated by. Trump is the post-fact, post-accomplishment president. I'm gonna take advantage of division and polarization, and hey, kids, let's put on a show. And so you know what's interesting about, when you're talking about younger voters, voters and they say they care about climate change, right? What The Movement To Get Rid Of Biden Was Really AboutYou remember the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton primary in 2016? We remember it because we were at the convention that year. After that, the DNC, which was at the time led by Tom Perez and Keith Ellison, after the new leadership turned over, sat down with Sanders, sat down with Biden actually, and Obama and the whole crew, and they all agreed to get rid of the super delegate system who did the super delegate system benefit? Elites.The super delegates themselves were elites, and to remind everybody what the system was, Democratic voters named a percentage of the delegates, and then there was this big pot of super delegates. Who was not elected by the voters but got an equal vote as the voters as to who gets to be the nominee.That's a whole lot of power, right? And in 2018, everybody sat down and one of the good things, no matter how you feel about what Bernie did in the 2016 campaign, one of the good things that came out of his run was they reformed the primary process. So, the primary process was given to the voters. Now that seems like no big deal, but then COVID came in 2020 and everything fell into place quickly for Biden because of the new reforms. When Biden started getting momentum after South Carolina, he was able to put it away pretty quickly. Now fast forward to 2024, Biden storms through the primaries. The voters again say, we want Biden. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The people that in normal circumstances, which are these 40 House Democrats or 30 House Democrats and these elected leaders and all these people that were saying Biden had to step aside, they would have been superdelegates normally. They were nobody special in 2024. That's what this all is. This all comes down to controlling the party and power. This has been a power struggle. They want power back because it was taken away from them and given to the voters. And this is what I keep coming back to. And that's why you're hearing that BS. about an open process to find the new nominee. Yeah, that's BS. And I'm, that actually disgusted me. And the more people that are repeating this, people that I used to respect, it's like, we already had an this process.We already did this process. You don't get to tell the voters that they don't get the people. They, they said, if it's not Joe, they want Kamala. So you people all need to take a seat because that is what's going to happen. That's the way it should happen. That's what is right to happen now. Yeah, and instead they're doing this whole thing.I just I know that they're gonna come up with issues they have with Kamala here if she doesn't fall into line for them and you you know Give them the power they seek and I just don't think she's that kind of person. I don't think I don't think she is either. Yeah, I think she's gonna cave to them and I think that's gonna be a problem. I also think that if she ends up being the nominee, she should be left alone. There should be no open process to pick her running mate. She should pick her own running mate. Absolutely. She should have that if she's the nominee. It should not be in the convention. The convention shouldn't get to choose the VP or whatever nonsense they're thinking of.2024 Is Not 1968The comparisons to 1968 I think are way off base. All right, tell us more about that. Okay, very simply, there are a few different reasons why. The main reason is that LBJ was forced out of office in 1968 because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. His vice president, Humphrey, was also saddled with the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. There was an overriding issue that led to President Johnson losing, didn't even lose, did poorly in the primary, got embarrassed, said Democratic voters don't want me and he left. That's not what happened in 2024.There is no overriding issue here within the Democratic Party that pushed Joe Biden out the door. In fact, Democratic voters said they wanted Joe Biden. Yeah, and every time that they, that, that people were trying to push him out, the voters kept speaking more and more and more and more. We saw that in the rally in Detroit, for example.And, since there is no predominating issue driving the democratic dislike of the president, then Vice President Harris is not saddled with a 1968-style issue. And the democratic party, if we can just cut the crap for a minute, is not deeply divided on issues on beating Donald Trump. They are not divided.We hope you like the podcast. Our hour-long conversation contains so much more. Please give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is an independent newsletter prioritizing American values like democracy and freedom. Please subscribe to support our work.In this special podcast that was recorded before the Trump rally shooting, Sarah Jones and Jason Easley discuss how and why the corporate media are failing to meet this moment in our democracy.Below are some quotes from our discussion:The Corporate Media Makes The Abnormal NormalPeople just get desensitized. I would always, always, always ask people, and I, I, you do this all the time. You have to stop and ask yourself, is this normal? When we tell you, it was Donald Trump and his criminal cases. And all, you were like, this is, no one else has ever run for president or been a president and then get charged with this many criminal cases, or any criminal cases.So ask yourself, is this normal? And if the answer is, this is not normal. Then look at how people are covering it and ask yourself, why are they treating something that is not normal as normal? And don't trust them after that. That's what I have to say for right now. It's not you. It's not you. Don't let people gaslight you.Why The Corporate Media Seems So Out Of TouchTell me why are media organizations treating Trump like he is the successful president that Joe Biden actually is. And Joe Biden, like he's the criminal that Trump actually is. Because this isn't about presidencies or accomplishments. It's about corporate profits, revenue. engagement, which they think Trump will bring. The concentration of corporate ownership and our large media companies has resulted in for profit owner with for profit news, which needs and sustains narratives and storylines. It needs to sustain its own narratives and storylines. What we saw happen with the debate was the media. The big corporate media has needed a storyline for this election.We, it's not a big surprise to anyone listening that engagement with content about this election is way down, right? It's a rematch. People are not, people know who their candidates are this time. There's not many persuadable voters because the country is so polarized. So engagement for election content this year has been very low.And usually presidential elections are a cash cow for media companies. When the debate rolled around and it was the two previous candidates again, they were the media was already looking for a narrative to create drama with this election. And since they had been pushing the Biden age narrative for roughly a year previously.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Corporations Don’t Care About DemocracyThey are only interested in profit. So we use the example of the New York Times. The New York Times, the vast, vast majority of their page subscription base what was our number? Like 82 to 92 percent or something I saw? They're liberals. They're center left and they're liberals. The New York Times, though, being a corporation, thinks they already have that audience.They want that other audience. They want that Fox News audience. Because the corporation doesn't care about the politics. They don't care about democracy. They care about money, and profits, and revenue. How can they get all the readers? Not some of the readers. Not just readers that, that So fill a certain way, they assume that the people on the center and left are going to stay there so they can reach out and go to the right.And then when Joe Biden came along and gave them the gut punch of, and not just them, but basically every corporate media outlet, think about it. How many interviews is Joe Biden actually done on MSNBC during the presidency? It's not many. And that includes the morning Joe one of But, but they want everything.They're corporations. They have no feelings. They have no values. They just want profit. This goes to the, to a larger point about late stage capitalism, which is, we're now at the point, and we saw this with, with Zaslav's comment the other day, that, they, he's not going to tell you who he wants for president, but what we need is more deregulation so we can, consolidate more media as if that's not, that's already the problem.We've got so much consolidation that what you're talking about, the bottom line is the only thing that matters. And these people are never happy. Like we didn't get into this business to make a profit, but these people are never happy, even when they're making a profit, the New York Times is making a billion dollars a year.We hope you enjoy the podcast. Please give it a listen and share your thoughts in the comments below.And they're not happy with that. That's not enough. That's the problem with late stage capitalism is it becomes not just making a profit and there's no business ethics. It used to be that you had to you want to balance out being a good member of society as a business. That was a value that businesses used to at least pretend to have.And then. You want to make a nice profit and pay your employees. Now it is. The only thing that matters is that we increase our profit for the shareholders. They're the only people who matter. Nobody else matters. And it can't. It's not enough to make a billion dollars next year. You have to make a billion and a half dollars next year. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.comWith democracy and freedom under attack, The Daily is fighting for our rights, and we could use your help. To support us, please consider becoming a subscriber.Explaining Trump Jury SelectionSarah was recently on BBC Five Live, where she discussed the Trump trial jury selection. Here is the lightly edited transcript of her interview:Q: This process is pretty normal in high-profile trials, isn't it? But what's interesting, from what I can gather, Donald Trump's in the court while these jurors are talking about him. Sarah Jones: Yes. He yesterday was reported to have fallen asleep and was also reported to have fallen asleep today, but kind of perked up when they were asked questions about the books that he has written that they have read.So it's weird to watch him in court and to watch a former president. This is a historic trial. This is a criminal trial that has never happened against a former American president before.Q: One of the jurors who was excused yesterday said that you'd have to have lived in a cardboard box not to have a prior opinion of Donald Trump. Is that a fair point? Sarah Jones: That really is because he was famous. He's lived in New York as his main residence his entire life and he's lived in Manhattan since 1971. And he was already famous there long before he ran for president. And in fact, during the 2016 election, there was a lot of kind of arguments about why so many people in Manhattan don't like him that he has a reputation as maybe a shyster, a little, running a little bit of a shady business.

The Daily is a newsletter committed to democracy and journalism, and we could use your help. If you would like to support our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Today, we're going to be talking about the threat the media poses to our democracy, and how the media has become perhaps unintentionally complicit. Sarah Jones: In this growing threat of autocracy, the media has been pushing false equivalencies and asymmetric coverage of, for example, the age of the 2 leading Presidential candidates: President Joe Biden, the Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican, the latter of whom has been criminally indicted on 91 counts, and recently found liable for sexual assault, and in a separate case for fraud.Trump is also accused of inciting a terrorist attack against the United States in an attempted self coup to remain in power even after the people voted him out. In other words, it's very clear that these 2 candidates are not the same and even after it's become clear that Donald Trump and the Republican party, under his leadership, are harmful to the national security of the United States, and indeed, the very concept of the US. and her sacred freedoms, the media's will and capability to tackle encroaching autocracy remains distressing. Whether that's due to a corporate mindset, the for-profit news click bait or outdated an outdated method of journalism which is so easily exploited by dishonest actors, such as the he said/she said version of journalism.But the bottom line is the media should be fair to the public and to the facts there is no obligation to present both parties as the same. Yet, even as the Republican party over the last decade has become more corrupt. The media continues to launder their misinformation and phony scandals, and it sure Democrats have been guilty of this as well, but just on a on a scale. This is largely benefiting the Republican Party.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts, podcasts and to support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Joining me today to discuss this is Kaivan Schroff, a democratic political commentator and public interest attorney. He is a frequent guest on CNN. Tonight, and a press secretary for Dream America. Welcome to the Politicus Pod.Kaivan Shroff: Great to join Sarah. I know we've been following each other for a few years. So glad to be on.So good to have you, and I really can't wait to get into this. So you are an expert on this, and you've brought up a lot of thoughts about this. One of your concepts that you've mentioned many times is the that I want you to get into here, for our audience, is the “Trifecta of bad incentives: The book deals that cable news hits and going viral.” How do you see that as having degraded the Fourth Estate? And do you think it's gotten worse since 2016, or is it the same?KS: Yes, so you know, I really focused on this for a project a capstone at Harvard Law School in the Kennedy school, where I was really focused on we had to pick a big public problem, and I thought one of the most timely public problems we face as a country in a democracy is clearly the decline of trust in our media. And also, I think, the the degradation of journalism. It's not just perception, of course. So one of the things I tapped into was what I'm calling the trifecta of bad incentives. And this is something I think we saw very clearly during the trump era, but even started earlier, and what those incentives are, and you mentioned some of them social media fame going viral, I think, blurring the lines we've seen between influencers and journalists, and why that costs us trust at a accelerated rate.Then number 2. All these book deals that it seems like reporters are more focused on than actually reporting. And even we've seen so many cases now where reporters are sitting on scoops of national importance so that they can save that for a book launch or a book tour, you know, a year plus later, what does that cost the public? And then, third, the cable news hits and wanting to be on TV and wanting to go viral again in those sort of reality. TV. Ask exchanges, making themselves the story. And I think you know, some of those moments were really positive. I think a lot of us fondly remember Jim Acosta standing up to bullies at the White House, you know. Press secretary Room. Briefing room, and, you know, going toe to toe with Sarah Sanders and Trump, who are lying to the public. But now that we do have trustworthy folks in those roles you still see some of the same behaviors where these reporters want to have that moment, and it's not necessarily in service of the truth. It's more in service of their agenda. So would love to get into all of that.SJ: There's a great example. He is someone who is doing has been doing and continues to do a good job. He was standing up for the right for the press to ask these questions that he was trying to ask. But then I do see people trying to model themselves off of that, to have this moment where they're kind of shrieking at the Press Secretary, in hopes of getting attention for questions a lot of times not even based in reality, which I'm sad to say because I do support journalists. There's such a difference in the when we're talking about individual journalists. I think most of them have good intentions. So that's part of the question, too. How does how do we get here where people are putting this, as you put it, this viral fame moment ahead of their own integrity. The book deals. What a great point! Because over and over again these little nuggets of, ‘Oh, yeah, your country was at risk, and I held it for my book. Here we are, 2 years later.’ That does not inspire trust in people. And one of my concerns about the lack of trust in media is, ‘how many people have tuned out to politics altogether because of this media coverage?’More in the pod! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoy our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Here are the top three takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decision to hear former President Donald Trump’s immunity case: The legal ramifications, the confirmation about the corruption of the court, and the political ramifications — including a surprising silver lining.* Every day of delay serves to give Trump effective immunity: “The SCOTUS stays DC case and expedites hearing the Trump appeal on immunity. But every day of delay operates as granting Trump de facto immunity,” Andrew Weissman pointed out. * Yes, the Supreme Court is corrupt. "Look, this is a momentous decision, just to hear this case. There was no reason in this world for the Supreme Court to take this case. The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had written a masterful opinion, denying that the president’s claims of absolute immunity under the constitution and the laws of the United States, there’s never been an argument that a former president is immune from prosecution for crimes that he committed while in office. On a more practical level, of course, the court — the Supreme Court is capable of deciding this very quickly, in time that the former president could be tried, before the election. But today’s decision makes that that much more unlikely,” conservative Judge Luttig said.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.* But, it actually gives Democrats a very easy Get Out the Vote call to action. “My view of the SCOTUS action: if the trial is delayed until after November, we will see THE LARGEST BLUE WAVE IN HISTORY. If November becomes a referendum on whether Trump faces justice, then Democrats will absolutely flip the House, keep the White House and expand the Senate,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) pointed out.Everyone reading this newsletter is already aware that this Supreme Court is corrupt, so many of you probably already feared this outcome. But there is a silver lining to their corruption being made so blatant so early in an election year, and that is as Rep. Lieu pointed out an opportunity for Democrats to drive up turn out, to make an easy case about the importance of showing up to vote. One thing I’d add is to make sure to ask the candidates you support what they will do about this Court. Do they support expanding the court? Do they support term limits? You can actually request a constituent meeting with your member of Congress to tell them how important this issue is. For tips on that, you can visit Demand Justice. One thing is clear: Republicans are not going to make keeping our democracy easy. But they aren’t banking on you, and I am. I know you’re going to show up and turn out. Don’t let these attacks on justice and democracy bring you down, because they are counting on that to kill morale. Instead, use it to fuel your efforts and determination to do more. Talk to more people. Knock on more doors. There is a reckoning coming for those who have tried to destroy freedom in this country.Share your thoughts on the Supreme Court taking Trump’s immunity case in the comments below.PM Links:Illinois Kicks Insurrectionist Trump Off The BallotSupreme Court Shows How Corrupt It Is By Hearing Trump Immunity ClaimJudge Rules Trump Must Pay $454 Million Fraud BondTrump Admits That He Doesn’t Have The Money To Post Fraud BondHouse Republicans Are Humiliating Themselves Questioning Hunter BidenBiden Moves To Replace Gun Violence With Economic Opportunity This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe

The Daily is 100% reader-supported. Please consider becoming a subscriber to ensure that you never miss a podcast or a newsletter.Here we are, facing another Comey political hit job like the one he did on Hillary Clinton.Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report exonerated President Joe Biden on the classified documents case. But that’s not the headline. The press took the bait as if they learned nothing from 2016. The headline from folks like the AP was:This is a good time to point out that President Biden sat for this interview for two days, October 8th and 9th, as he was dealing with the international crisis of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.This partisan hit job on President Joe Biden went so low as to attack him in a DOJ report for not recalling the date his son died, a matter that was wholly unrelated to the issue of classified documents and had no place in an official report given by someone who does not have any expertise in memory issues and was not called upon to give a report about anything other than classified documents.The report was issued by a Trump appointee and Trump supporter whom Merrick Garland appointed as special counsel over Biden for some unknown reason. This man even stated that Biden willfully took the documents and shared them, yet later in the report admits he has no proof of this.Is this a clown show? What is going on? Why wasn’t the report even looked at by Garland before being published?You might be wondering why Biden’s age is even being raised as a concern when his opponent is an adjudicated rapist found liable for fraud who faces 91 felony counts, including for acts against the United States, and is not only an authoritarian but also “elderly” with memory problems.The point, or at least result, is to conflate Biden and Trump as similar, while glossing over Trump’s egregious criminal indictments, incompetency as president, two impeachments, sexual assault accusations including a jury finding him liable for rape, and worst of all his attack on this nation after he lost an election and the continued attempts to use lies about fraud to steal votes from over 81 million Americans.That is the story.The real story is how different these two men are, even though on the surface they are both white, older, and stumble when speaking.And even this requires context, because while both men forget names and dates, Trump speaks in second or third grade phrases; it’s not clear he has a grasp of nuanced policy on any matter, whereas Biden clearly does. Biden goes to work every day and does the job; Trump did not. Etc. Biden holds press conferences and takes questions he answers with comprehension of policy, even when he stumbles, which he does. The man has a stutter and he is older, but even younger politicians misspeak often enough that this shouldn’t even be raising eyebrows.As they were criticizing President Biden for his “memory” issues, Sean Hannity couldn’t pronounce Angela Merkel’s name and Jesse Watters called Kristi Noem the Governor of South Carolina.Are they being fired?Speaker Johnson confused Israel with Iran on Meet the Press. Is his memory the topic of discussion? Why not?Just in passing, Trump forgot what year he was president during his time on the stand in a New York trial, as president he suggested Frederick Douglass was still alive and ‘being recognized more and more,’ he confused a photo of his rape victim for his ex-wife during a deposition, called Nikki Haley Nancy Pelosi repeatedly, thought he was running against Barack Obama, said Viktor Orban is the leader of Turkey, claimed voter ID is required to buy bread, had to be told where he was during a speech.There are three parts to this equation on how propaganda works: The DOJ, the Press, and You.DOJ:Former justice officials say Hur put his “thumb on the scale”Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman on MSNBC: “Unfortunately we’re seeing a redux of what we saw with respect to James Comey at the FBI with respect to Hillary Clinton.” He also called the report " Entirely inappropriate, that's not the role of the Department of Justice… It's gratuitous. It's what you're not supposed to do which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions. Adjectives and adverbs, those have no place... stick to the facts.”Neal Katyal Former Acting U.S. Solicitor General : “My first tour at the Justice Department, I wrote the special counsel regulations that give this special counsel Robert Hur his power. And at the end of it, we actually said that there shouldn't be a public report in general, that there shouldn’t be a kind of list of adjectives, to use Andrew’s phrase, that would occur.I'm not aware of anything quite like this, in which you’ve got a special counsel going after the sitting president for being too old and having a faulty memory. That is, you know, he's come up with a clever way to get those adjectives in there by saying, well, if I brought this case to trial, this is what I would face from a jury.”Former AG Eric Holder: “Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions. Had this report been been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.”CNN Chief Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin: “It was outrageous that Hur put in some of that stuff in this report. That had no place in it. There is no reason this report had to be 300 pages. There is no reason why this fairly straightforward case had to be treated this way. I mean this is just like what James Comey did to Hillary Clinton…The job of prosecutors is to put up or shut up. If you have a case, bring your case. If you don't have a case, shut the hell up.”Discussion:Why exactly did Hur go beyond the point: “The evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”? Instead, he began his op-ed into Biden’s mental state and memory in the future – something that has zero relevance to the issue and read more like the Tumblr post of a confused teenager --in what can only be described as a political gift to Donald Trump.And Garland did not review or did review and allowed this completely unsupported opinion to remain, even though he was well aware that Hur’s bio was an advertisement of his potential political agenda.A commentator wrote me on X: “I investigate and write reports like this SC report for a living. I have never once deviated from the essential facts and conclusions to answer the question I am to address: Is there sufficient evidence to…”This is the second Trump appointed Special Counsel he has appointed, perhaps in a mistaken and misguided effort to appear neutral to Republicans, who are never going to even care if someone is neutral.This frankly is the biggest weakness we have facing authoritarianism: A desire to be even-handed when the opposition is playing a death match and the belief that somehow only Republicans can be trusted to fairly judge a Democrat, but also only Republicans can be trusted to fairly judge a Republican president. Funny how that works. Garland was a non-partisan, highly ethical institutionalist who would have made the perfect Supreme Court justice. His ethics alone would have changed the course of SCOTUS from what it has become.But we are fighting encroaching authoritarianism, and this requires a certain temperament and spine. Garland is a brilliant person with high integrity, but we can see how easily exploited is his excessive tendency toward congeniality and institutionalism.Not every person with integrity can be a warrior, though, and Garland is showing himself to be incapable of rising to this moment in history. On this matter, I continue my criticism of his appointment to Attorney General, and no, it won’t matter how much people yell at me about it. Press:The press feasted on the carcass of Biden’s grief and it was grotesque.Last night, the White House press corps attacked Biden in what can only be called a feeding frenzy of ambulance-chasing cheap tabloid tactics. They attacked Biden harder than they’ve ever come at Trump, who is facing 91 indictments and tried to overthrow the U.S. government to steal an election. They were so rabid career journalists expressed their disgust.This environment is certainly not about justice or fairness and way too much of the DC press is operating more as tabloid media than as political press. The people are going to have to insist on better by refusing to reward this tabloid orientation to political coverage.John Harwood:Biden's press conference showed the same thing his performance in office has shown for 3 years: he can do the job Mexico for Egypt meant nothing but the GOP political apparatus is a bad-faith enterprise and mainstream press has been knocked silly by financial/political pressureMatt McDermott:Four separate articles in the NYT today about Biden’s age today, including a *35 paragraph* front page article on a verbal gaffe.Trump’s own verbal gaffes are mentioned once, 21 paragraphs in, wherein we’re told they don’t matter because “voters do not question his sharpness.”This isn’t journalism, this is electioneering. And it isn’t reporting, it’s punditry. This is the press openly speculating on politics rather reporting on substance, quite literally calling balls and strikes on what they deem voters should and shouldn’t care about.”And Aaron Fritschner (DCoS/CD Rep. Don Beyer): Biden address

There are several takeaways after today’s stunning verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit in which a Manhattan federal jury awarded her $83.3 million, including the legal, the political, and the personal.Legal: To set the stage for this in context of the other cases Trump is facing, his lawyer argued today to nullify a jury’s finding, and the judge slapped them down. That argument is one to not to follow the law.  That failed today.If that argument of jury nullification had been successful, it would have set the stage to undermine the U.S. court system, which would be beneficial for someone facing 91 felony counts (91 charges across four criminal cases. They include 44 federal charges and 47 state charges, all of them felonies.) and a separate fraud case. There’s no knowing if a criminal court will come to the same conclusion or uphold the rule the law, but this was a good indication that our legal institution has held against the ongoing assault of Donald Trump behaving as if he is above the law. (The unchecked corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court notwithstanding.)Today’s jury came back with $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive, for a total of $83.3 million for defamation Trump committed while president, in 2019.The $65 million in punitive damages is meant to punish and deter.  The amount can be lowered by the trial court, but given Trump’s stated net worth, he might find himself in a tough position making that argument. We don’t actually know how much money Trump has. This high amount signals that the jury thinks the defendant’s conduct was outrageous, and this is a way to deter future conduct.The jury penalized Trump in a way that shows he is perhaps finally facing accountability in the courts. Both today’s case and the upcoming fraud case are civil cases; the former President has yet to be tested in a criminal court.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Political:In the Republican primary, this means nothing – they’ve already decided this is fake. But in the general election, this is not great for Republicans. It will hurt more in the fall than right now, especially given that we are in a post-Roe environment in which women have shown tremendous political power in recent elections.Trump has already attacked the decision on social media, and he will continue to attack the media and blame President Joe Biden for the decision of a jury, which is unlikely to move many voters other than his core supporters. So when you hear the argument that this is going to be good for Trump politically, yes it will be in the Republican primary but it will not help him in the general election and is likely to hurt in a way that the Access Hollywood tape didn’t in 2016.Personal:This was an important victory for survivors of sexual assault. In the U.S., women have watched as Donald Trump was elected after being caught on tape bragging about grabbing women and getting away with it, so there’s been an ongoing sense that there justice escapes the powerful like Mr. Trump. It’s important for victims and survivors to hear that no one is above the law and that they matter, and their voices are important.We all owe a debt of gratitude to E. Jean Carroll for having the fortitude to persevere through what had to have been a nightmare of threats, intimidation and more as well as ongoing defamation and attacks on her character. The E. Jean Carroll jury gave U.S. democracy a strong argument to shut down the attempt by Trump and his lawyers to establish that the rule of law shouldn’t apply to him and further that jury decisions should be nullified when one doesn’t like them. They also gave a very important $83.3 million message of justice for victims and survivors of sexual assault. What do think about the E. Jean Carroll verdict? Let us know by leaving a comment below. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thedailypoliticususa.com/subscribe